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Death and Dying An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion Timothy David Knepper
This series explores important intersections within and between the disciplines of religious studies and philosophy. These original studies will emphasize, in particular, aspects of contemporary and classical Asian philosophy and its relationship to Western thought. We welcome a wide variety of manuscript submissions, especially works exhibiting highly focused research and theoretical innovation.
Recent Titles in This Series
Exile and Otherness: The Ethics of Shinran and Maimonides, by Ilana Maymind
Gandhi’s Thought and Liberal Democracy, by Sanjay Lal
Plantingian Religious Epistemology and World Religions: Prospects and Problems, by Erik Baldwin and Tyler Dalton McNabb
Three Pillars of Skepticism in Classical India: Nāgārjuna, Jayarāśi, and Śrī Harṣa, by Ethan Mills
Dharma and Halacha: Comparative Studies in Hindu-Jewish Philosophy and Religion, edited by Ithamar Theodor and Yudit Kornberg Greenberg
Philosophy of the Ancient Maya: Lords of Time, by Alexus McLeod
Making Space for Knowing: A Capacious Approach to Comparative Epistemology, by Aaron B. Creller
Postmodern Ethics, Emptiness, Literature: Encounter between East and West, by Jae-seong Lee
Exile and Otherness
The Ethics of Shinran and Maimonides
Ilana Maymind
LEXINGTON BOOKS
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Excerpts from The Collected Works of Shinran, Vol. I and Vol. II. Kyoto, Japan: Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-Ha, 1997. Reprinted with permission.
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Preface
Any scholarly writing, despite the possible claims otherwise, always represents that particular scholar’s point of view. Even when one is recording something as benign as one’s biography, it is always based on that particular scholar’s reconstruction of that biographical data. Any reflections on such thoughts assume an even more complicated stance. Yet, neither the reconstruction of one’s biography nor the reflections on one’s thought should be confused with falsification. Rather, it is an acknowledgment of a selective focus based on the scholar’s interests. For instance, even recording data related to Shinran’s and Maimonides’ biography is to some degree an arbitrary process since emphasis can be placed on certain periods of their life to highlight and underscore specific elements in their thought. Keeping this in mind, my focus was on the issues that interest me the most, namely, Shinran’s and Maimonides’ conception of human nature in general, their views of good and evil, the role of the Law, and the impact of exile on their thought. Thus, when sifting through the biographical information, I was more attuned to noticing any moments in their biography and their writings that shed light on these particular notions.
Writing this work made me recognize how little I am in this vast sea of ignorance and how much is there to learn. My sense of gratitude is immense. I am infinitely grateful for the support I received from my friends and family. My heartfelt thank you goes to Frederick Brenion, and Dolores Ciardelli. Their selfless help kept me honest!
My thank you goes to Casey Dorman, Martin Zwick, and Jonathon Cassell for reading and commenting on my chapters.
None of this work would have ever happened without Thomas Kasulis and Tamar Rudavsky who started me on this path of recognizing again and again how much is there to learn and learn and learn again.
Preface
My deepest thank you goes to my family Michael, Alex, Allie, and Leo. Thank you for believing in me.
My mistakes are mine only. My path of learning will never end. I dedicate my writing to Noa with the hope for the better future.
Introduction
Exile has been an ever-present phenomenon. However, in the twenty-first century, the presence of exilic people has become even more ubiquitous. There is not a nation that is unaffected by the influx of exiles. In many cases, exiles are perceived with suspicion and viewed as a threat to the homogeneous cohesion of a given society. Given the presence of hostility toward these exiles, it becomes even more imperative to revisit our understanding and approach to exile and to the exiled.
Adorno argues that exile is a “life in suspension” and is directly related to morality since “it is part of morality not to be at home in one’s home.”1 In his view, being in exile makes one a perpetual stranger and sharpens one’s ethical stance. He further suggests that “only by resisting the comforts of home (or homeland) is it possible to exercise one’s moral judgment.”2 Similarly, Lithuanian-born French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) interprets exile as holding ethical implications. Levinas questions Western ethics and provides a conceptualization of ethics as being intricately connected to exile. In his Totality and Infinity, Levinas argues that the moral blindness that led to the absence of resistance to Nazism resulted from lack of concern for the “stranger.” A similar critique was offered by Horkheimer and Adorno in their Dialectic of the Enlightenment when they argued that “For Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers and ultimately into one, is illusion.”3
For Levinas, ethics is not a result of maxims but a consequence of human ability to empathize with the other. This other is often the one who becomes exiled or displaced. Levinas’s view of exile incidentally is in line with that of Hebrew thought which considers exilic experience as God’s punishment. The Hebrew view of exile as a mark of God’s punishment is complemented, however, by a theory of redemption that has ethical possibilities. Indeed, Saadia Gaon in The Book of Beliefs and Opinions considers exile a means of purification.
Historically, exile has become a political act since the inception of this entwinement.4 Biblical accounts of Abraham and Moses highlight the very first examples of exile. In most cases, exile reflects the dissident mood which results from “major differences of political allegiance between the most powerful in the state and the person being exiled.”5 Exile itself has often been used as a means to silence any dissidents by placing them either outside of their own country or, tucking them away from their supporters and followers. This separation from a familiar place, from friends and supporters, often produces a sense of alienation. In the Roman world, exile was a substitute for physical death. In some cases, voluntary exile was chosen as an option to avoid unfavorable political, religious, or cultural conditions. For instance, some noble Roman exiles preferred exile to the compromise of living by abiding with political conditions which they strongly disfavored but were unable to influence or change.
An exilic condition is often linked to being in diaspora. Diaspora is defined as the process of scattering.6 Conditions of diaspora lead us to consider the complexity of a “diasporic” identity. The diasporic identity has a potential of heterogeneity and diversity: “a conception of identity which lives and through, not despite, difference: by hybridity.”7 Living in these conditions engenders one with “double (and even plural) identifications that are constitutive of hybrid forms of identity.”8 Diasporic people often conceive of themselves in terms of powerlessness, longing, and displacement. This identity often encapsulates an awareness of a minority status. Yet, in some cases this powerlessness becomes transformed into political empowerment.
As already alluded, the Hebrew conception of exile is profoundly different from that of a Western view. Specifically, the Hebrew tradition came to see exile as a concept “laden with positive significations and possibilities.” 9 Hebrew thought in relation to exile is articulated in the words of the Psalmist: “I am only a sojourner in the land; do not hide Your commandments from me” (Ps. 119:19). These commandments attach themselves to the stranger as one who remains on fringes of existence and as such become central to continual survival. The Hebrew prophets always appealed to the senses rather than the intellect. This appeal to the senses is exhibited in concern for those who for one reason or another might be overlooked or neglected. Abraham Heschel stated: “Instead of dealing with timeless issues of being and becoming, of matter and forms, of definitions and demonstrations, [the prophet] is thrown into orations about widows and orphans, about the corruption of judges and affairs of the marketplace.” 10 By focusing on the downtrodden, exile becomes a means of attuning sensibility and attention to the stranger.
Historically, with the exclusion of Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhist conception of exile is not addressed. Perhaps the closest we can get to the concept of exile is by looking at the wandering monks. In Buddhist literature, a “wanderer” is defined as someone who is free from worldly attachment. Buddhist monks’ wandering mode of living without a settled home and the practice of pilgrimage contributed to the spread of Buddhism. In medieval Japan, from the eight century on, the hijiri became
wanderers in the mountains and from village to village and city to city as protectors of the common people. They followed three religious practices: the invocation of the name of the Buddha Amida (nenbutsu); Shungendo (mountain asceticism of Tantric Buddhism and Shinto shamanism); and yin-yang magic. Nenbutsu practice was the most prominent among the three practices.11
In this work, to address the issue of the implications of exile, I place into a hypothetical conversation two medieval thinkers: Shinran (1173–1262), founder of Japanese Shin Buddhism (Jodo Shinshu) and Maimonides (1136–1204), Jewish philosopher rabbi, community leader and physician, to point out that their respective environments of displacement accentuated and sensitized their construction of ethics in terms of otherness. I maintain that their views, while continuing the trajectory stated in antiquity, exhibit significant contemporary relevance with respect to such issues as exclusion, inclusion, and tolerance.
The choice of focus on these two thinkers is not predicated merely upon their being contemporaries, though divided by a vast geographic distance, but is informed by their respective statuses within their communities. Both Maimonides and Shinran faced political environments that placed them either into the position of a dissident in Shinran’s case or of an unwelcome minority (and dissident) in Maimonides’ case.
While philosophy and consequently philosophers are often treated in terms of “a continuation of Plato’s enterprise,”12 which is the life of a withdrawal from everyday social life, viewing any thinkers and their thought outside of their respective environments means overlooking the fact that some of their views are directly affected by these environments. Any peoples’ thought cannot be fully understood if it is abstracted from the history of their lives as a whole. In the case of Shinran and Maimonides, their thought cannot be fully comprehended if their respective exiles are not taken into account. Consequently, rather than viewing Shinran and Maimonides as Plato’s “cave philosophers,” we hold that their thought demonstrates direct applicability to the concepts of integration and acceptance into a new environment.
We recall that for Jews, the conditions of exile did not allow the political control of a state; one could only control one’s own community. In some cases, a given community is forced to exercise a certain level of exclusivity. This exclusivity is connected to the concept of the boundary, which encapsulates the identity of a given community and makes that community distinct from other communities. Yet, Jewish diasporic culture, in its best circumstances, that is, Muslim Spain, allowed for “a complex continuation of Jewish cultural creativity and identity.”13 This contention can be illustrated through Maimonides’ ability to be “simultaneously the vehicle of the preservation of traditions and of the mixing of cultures.”14 As an “in-between” status, the cultural space situates one on both sides of the boundary. This creative mixture of cultures has its own price but also attunes one to the inadequacies and imperfections of human life and human functioning.
A diasporic existence, as already mentioned, requires a certain compromise. Maimonides’ existence would have been intolerable if he had completely isolated himself from the Islamic community. What testifies to his diasporic “hybrid identity” is that despite Maimonides’ commitment to maintaining the commandments, the Muslim
world was more than “a mere background to the life of the Jewish community.” Rather, it represented “the larger frame of which the Jewish community was an integral part.”15 And yet, this ability to adjust does not negate his sense of displacement from the land of his birth and nostalgia for the familiar images. I view Maimonides’ diasporic existence in terms of a displacement from the familiar place of his birth and childhood. I view Shinran’s diasporic existence in terms of a displacement from the familiarity of the monastic environment which enhanced his subsequent ability to further reevaluate the expectations or lack thereof of the notion of indiscriminative enlightenment.
In Shinran’s case, the “diasporic identity” lay in his asserting that he was “neither a monk nor a layperson.” His “diasporic identity” exposed him to the hardships and perseverance of the common people and heightened his appreciation of their perilous lives. For Shinran, the sense of exile carries a meaning of reevaluating life in his new capacity as a layperson and reinventing one’s own identity in a setting characterized by a different set of rules.
We discuss throughout our chapters that while Shinran’s exilic life did not have a similar liminal duality to the same degree as that of Maimonides, it did sensitize him to the ways the monastic communities were often insensitive to the laity. Shinran’s ability to utilize his past experience and to integrate new knowledge resulted in his increased sense of compassion devoid of any judgment of how others should lead their lives. His experience of this displacement from the monastic community did not result, however, in dislocation from Japanese tradition and culture at large. Despite both Shinran’s and Maimonides’ distance or proximity to their respective communities and traditions, their traditions play an indisputable significance in their thought.
Shinran’s and Maimonides’ integration into a new for them society necessitated a construction of their “hybrid” identities. As mentioned, the “hybrid identity” of Maimonides was a result of belonging to multiple communities: his own Jewish community and the Islamic community in which he became embedded. Shinran’s identity was reinvented as well when, following expulsion from the monastic community, he entered the community of the common people and broke the monastic tradition by starting his own family. For him, exile meant becoming defrocked and being expelled from Japan’s capital, its intellectual and religious center, and returning to secular life. In this process of being stripped of his ordination, Shinran’s “exilic” identity underwent a change as he lost his religious name and was given a new name as a layman, which he refused to own.
Specific to Shinran and Maimonides, the creative mixture of cultures for Maimonides and the integration into a new environment for Shinran allowed them to view certain issues from the position of empathic outsiders. For Maimonides, his new life conditions stimulated an increased emphasis on Jewish communal life and the endorsement of the commandments (religious law) as a means for his continual existence while simultaneously being fully embedded and involved in the culture of his host land. For Shinran, it meant a complete and unconditional embrace of the
teachings of the Pure Land and particularly of the nenbutsu practice of the Buddha Amida.
Since Jews in Maimonides’ time never wrote their autobiographies, Maimonides had not addressed his own experience. Thus, everything that is known about him comes from his other writings and letters. Some additional important information is culled from the Cairo Geniza materials, discovered over a century ago in a closed chamber of the Fustat (or Old Cairo) synagogue. Likewise, Shinran had not left any notes or a personal account of his experience of exile.16 The influence of their displacements from their respective communities becomes apparent through their writings. Their writings demonstrate that this displacement—from the Andalusian Jewish community of his childhood and youth for Maimonides and from the monastic community of Kyoto for Shinran—produced a more sensitive and tolerant approach to other human beings. Thus, understanding their views requires taking into account the distinctive social circumstances in which their thoughts germinated and crystallized, including the circumstances and conditions of their exile. The goal is to demonstrate that their biographical experiences, which have informed their thinking, resonate with conditions of exile and diasporic living in pluralistic societies that define the lives of many individuals, communities, and societies in the twentyfirst century.
Applying the definition of ethics as “the glue that binds society together and ensures harmony, cohesion, and togetherness” and exile as “the dissolution of the communal bond and the expulsion one of one’s homeland or community,”17 we ask how to reconcile these two conflicting notions? The exiled never completely fits a given society’s consensus but by virtue of his experience carries the touch of another world and other viewpoints. How exactly could the conditions of exile contribute to ethics? We ask the question of how did Shinran and Maimonides become the exiles capable of experiencing awareness and sensitivity to the neglected and suffering of others by following Levinas’s articulation that “truth is accessible only to the mind capable of experiencing an exile away from its preconceptions and prejudices.” But we turn first to Shinran’s and Maimonides’ respective environments as the major contributors to their thought.
NOTES
1. Theodore Adorno, Mimina Moralia. Reflections on a Damaged Life (London/New York: Versa, 2005), 87.
2. Adorno, Mimina Moralia, 39.
3. Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno, “The Concept of Enlightenment,” in Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Continuum, 2007), 3–5.
4. Jan Felix Gaertner, Writing Exile: The Discourse of Displacement in Greco-Roman Antiquity and Beyond (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
5. Jo-Marie Claassen, Displaced Persons: The Literature of Exile from Cicero to Boethius (Madison/London: University of Wisconsin Press/Duckworth, 1999), 9.
6. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd edition, 2007, 356–358. Diasperien is composed of—dia, “across” and—sperien, “to sow or scatter seeds.” Historically, this term is connected to “displaced communities of people who have been dislocated from their native homeland through the movement of migration, immigration, or exile.” (Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur, “Nation, Migration, Globalization: Points of Contention in Diaspora Studies,” in Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader [Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003], 1). This term was first used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures intended for the Hellenic Jewish communities in Alexandria (circa third century BCE) to describe the Jews living in exile from the homeland in Palestine. I do not attempt to emphasize this fact since the term “diaspora” also denotes “traveling” and “wandering,” it can be applied to the Buddhist tradition of wandering monks as well. For a discussion on exile from God, cf., Yitzhak E. Baer, Galut (New York: Schocken Books, 1947).
7. Stuart Hall cited in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 357.
8. Claassen, Displaced Persons, 5.
9. Abe Doukhan, Emmanuel Levinas. A Philosophy of Exile (New York: Continuum, 2012), 11.
10. Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets: An Introduction (New York: Harper Collins, 1969), 3.
11. Ichiro Hori, “On the Concept of Hijiri (Holy-Man).” Numen, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 199–232, September 1, 1958. Shinran can be seen as part of the hijiri approach. As we will see in our discussion, Shinran denied the formal temple and priest system of his time. Following the principles of the tradition of hijiri, he never lived in a temple but rather in hunts or small hermitages and “stressed household religion as more important than temple religion” (224).
12. Cf. Alasdair Macintyre, Edith Stein. A Philosophical Prologue, 1913–1922 (Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield, 2007), 3.
13. Bluma Goldstein, “A Politics and Poetics of Diaspora: Heine’s ‘Hebraishe Melodien,’” in Diaspora and Exiles, Varieties of Jewish Identities, ed. Howard Wettstein (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 74.
14. Daniel Boyarin and Jonathan Boyarin, “Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity,” in Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003), 108.
15. Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 2.
16. Some very valuable information can be culled from the letters of Shinran’s wife Nun Eshinni. See James C. Dobbins, Letters of Nun Eshinni. Images of Pure Land Buddhism in Medieval Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004).
17. Doukhan, Emmanuel Levinas, 5.
1 Introducing Shinran and Maimonides
SHINRAN
Born in 1173 as Hino Arinori,1 Shinran belonged to a once aristocratic family, which eventually fell from political favor.2 The course of Shinran’s life directly affected the development of his thought, and his life can be analyzed through the lens of four distinct periods. Except for his childhood, he lived during the Kamakura period hence the first period of Shinran’s life falls between 1181 and 1201. At the age of nine, Shinran became a Tendai monk and studied on Mount Hiei. During this study, Shinran was an ordinary temple monk (dōsō), exposed to the Tendai system’s major doctrines as well as Pure Land thoughts of such Tendai masters as Ennin, Ryōgen, and Genshin. In addition, he was influenced by a prevalent religious consciousness in society known as the veneration of Prince Shōtoku (574–622),3 who was traditionally credited with the formal adoption of Buddhism in Japan and was seen as a manifestation of the Bodhisattva4 of compassion: Avalokitesvara (Jpn.: Kannon) and who in effect also preserved the link to Shinto’s concept of kami. 5
The second period falls between 1201 and 1207. At the age of 29, despite being significantly influenced by the Shōtoki consciousness as well as the Tendai teachings of the Pure Land, Shinran left Mt. Hiei. After a period of spiritual turmoil, he joined Hōnen (1133–1212), the religious reformer and founder of the first independent branch of Japanese Shin Buddhism (Jōdo shū) and his Pure Land movement. This period ended dramatically in 1207, when Hōnen and his disciples, including Shinran, were exiled. The third period, 1207 to 1245, consists of two periods of exile: an imposed exile, which lasted until 1214 and a self-imposed exile, which lasted until 1245.
From 1207 to 1214, Shinran lived in Echigo where he broke the monastic tradition by marrying and raising a family. It is during this time that he became
especially cognizant of the perils of life and started a self-conscious exploration of human nature with its passions and instincts. He developed a highly skeptical view of the traditional Tendai principle of attaining enlightenment by foregoing the “life of passion.”6 Shinran’s appreciation of the non-dualistic principles of not dichotomizing the religious life and lay life as two separate realms grew in tandem with his skepticism of Tendai principles. He not only recognized the inadequacy of the reliance on self-power (jiriki)7 but also perceived self-power as being fruitless and misleading. Instead, he turned to Other-power (tariki), the Power of Amida’s Primal Vow, which he defined as power “free from any form of calculation.”8 The exile had stripped Shinran of his ordination names, Shakku and Zenshin, and he choose the name Gutoku9 (“the foolish stubble-head”). The name denotes Shinran’s sense of awareness of deep self-attachment and recognition of his self-centeredness and wrongdoing. In 1214 the exile was lifted but instead of returning to Kyoto, Shinran chose a self-imposed exile and moved to another rural area, Kantō area. During this period, Shinran built a substantial following among the common people and established places for worship, dōjōs, where his followers gathered to listen to his teachings.
The overall exilic period was the most significant time in Shinran’s life for the crystallization of his thought. During this period, he became further disillusioned with both Buddhist institutional power and institutionalized societal power. In Kantō, Shinran began writing his magnum opus commonly called in Japanese Kyōgyōshinshō (Teaching, Practice, Faith, and Realization).10 In Kyōgyōshinshō, Shinran provides not only a systematic exposition of the various Pure Land texts but also compiles his own interpretation of Pure Land tradition. In his Postscript to Kyōgyōshinshō, Shinran shares his desire to retain his exilic identity and to remain separate from monastic institution.11 Here he calls himself Toku (“stubble-haired”) and thus does not identify himself as a monk. By saying he was not a monk, he divorced himself from the temporal power of the Buddhist tradition in Japan, and by saying he was not a layperson (“nor one in worldly life”), he distanced himself from the nobility or warriors but also highlighted his exilic identity. These words clearly articulated his political views as well as by stating his displeasure with the lack of ethical treatment of Hōnen’s followers.
In 1235, he returned to Kyoto, where he spent the rest of his life. Ironically, his return to Kyoto resulted from an imminent threat of persecution for teaching the exclusive practice of nenbutsu, senju nenbutsu but now in the countryside. However, during the fourth and the last period of his life from 1235 to 1262, Shinran continued teaching and explicating his ideas in various writings as well as in correspondence with his disciples. Shinran’s correspondence carries specific significance since it allows us a glimpse into his personality. It testifies not only to Shinran’s commitment to the teachings of Pure Land but also exemplifies his efforts to ensure that these teachings are not misinterpreted and wrongly accused of any antinomian charges. Shinran died in 1262.
Let us turn briefly to Shinran’s cultural background to understand Shinran’s thought better. It is important to acknowledge that early Japanese thinkers were
Introducing Shinran and Maimonides 9 characterized by their ability to syncretize the outside influences of Confucianism and Buddhism by adapting these influences to their own specific cultural factors: the indigenous tradition of Shinto. We already mentioned the impact of Prince Shōtoku’s role on Shinran’s thought and the fact that Shinran’s first monastic community was Tendai Buddhism. Tendai Buddhism was founded by Saichō (767–822), who was a competitor of Kūkai (774–835), the founder of the Shingon tradition known for its esoterism and its focus on the Buddha called Dainichi.12 Tendai Buddhism combined elements of both esoteric and exoteric Buddhism. Buddhism became deeply ingrained into Japanese society, during the Heian period (794–1185), via the support of the aristocrats and clergy. During the Heian period, “the ideal relationship between politics and religion was expressed in the statement: ‘The Imperial law and the Buddhist law are the two wheels of the cart’: the mutual support of these two well-balanced forces would assure the power and prosperity of both.”13 With the advent of the Kamakura period (1185–1333) much devastation and suffering occurred. Shinran’s mentor Hōnen and Shinran himself, both trained as Tendai monks, responded to this decline with their interpretation of the human condition, offering their own Pure Land solution. We recall that in various schools of East Asian Buddhism for Pure land practices, it was common to invoke the name of Amida Buddha by using the practice called nenbutsu (calling the name of Amida Buddha) or contemplate on Amida Buddha’s Land. In 1175, Hōnen established Shin Buddhism (Jōdo shū school), which later was further radicalized and transformed by Shinran. Before addressing any specifics of Pure Land tradition, for our purposes it is important to understand the period to which this tradition responded, specifically, the so-called degenerated age of mappō.
Mappō
The Kamakura period with all its devastation and suffering represented the crisis of the age, the degenerated age of mappō, characterized by the increased distance from the teachings and practices of the Buddha. We recall that relatively early in its history, Buddhism developed the idea of three periods of Buddhist law: the Period of Righteous law (Shōbo), the Period of the Counterfeit Law (Zōbo) and the Period of the Decay of Law (mappō).14 The Japanese concept of mappō denotes the third and eschatologically decisive period in the history of Buddha’s Dharma. It is also known as the period of Final Dharma during which enlightenment becomes unattainable. This declining period stems from the growing deficiencies of the Buddhist community (sangha), including the increased corruption of its leaders and the belief that the traditional teachings are no longer relevant to the needs of religious people. Given its eschatological undertones, mappō reflects the belief in the end of times as the end of the world itself. The impotence of imperial rule, the decline of the aristocracy, various natural and man-made calamities seemed to confirm the reality of the impending collapse. Pure Land thinkers accepted this view as a proof of a manifestation of human condition—weakness, imperfection, vulnerability, inability to withstand temptations.15
Shinran’s mentor Hōnen was one of the first thinkers of the Kamakura period who applied the doctrine of mappō to Buddhist practices, opening the Buddhist sangha to both men and women and all socioeconomic classes. For Hōnen, mappō offered both a challenge and an opportunity since it “did not mean the rampant violation of precepts but the disintegration of the sacrosanct authority of precepts that discriminated against certain groups of people” and thus “an age of boundless hope and optimism for the disadvantaged.”16 Shinran, as we will see, advanced this approach even more radically. For Shinran, mappō is more than just a period of history; it is also the manifestation of life itself and the exhibition of human nature. In Hymns of the Dharma Age, Shinran writes:
As the time of kalpa-defilement17 advances, / The bodies of sentient beings gradually grow smaller; / Their evil and wrongdoing amid the five defilements increase, / So that their minds are like poisonous snakes and evil dragons.18
Shinran’s view of human nature, particularly human evilness is directly impacted by mappō conditions and exacerbated by his own exilic experience. For Shinran, evil, though specific to each individual, comprises the essence of humanity in the circle of birth and rebirth, samsāra. It is Amida Buddha’s compassionate Vow, discussed below, which allows humans to be delivered into the Pure Land, free from suffering. The Pure Land tradition became a direct response to the hardships, human imperfections, and uncertainties. Already enjoying some popular support among the nonelite in the earlier Heian period, in the Kamakura period the Pure Land tradition took a critical stance toward the decline of the preceding Buddhist traditions into monastic formalism, sectarianism, and the focus on individual liberation.
Pure Land and Amida Buddha
So what exactly is this Pure Land tradition?19 The Pure Land tradition became an admixture of a Mahāyāna conception of enlightened wisdom and the karmic nature of human existence. We note here that the Pure Land path based on Amida Buddha is expounded in the Larger and Smaller Sutras, which trace their origins back to northwestern India in about the first century CE. These two sutras, along with the later Sutra of Contemplation on the Buddha of Immeasurable Life, form the foundation for the East Asian Pure Land tradition. In Japan, the Pure Land teachings, brought from Korea, have played a significant role since the sixth century CE. We have been mentioning Amida Buddha without explaining who he is. Here we are turning to a brief discussion of Amida Buddha by first noting that all the teachings of the Pure Land tradition pivot around the Buddha Amida, a Bodhisattva Hōzō (Sanskrit: Dharmākara) who attained the state of Buddhahood and whose essential quality became that of bringing all beings without exception, and regardless of their capacities, to enlightenment.
Amida Buddha—the Buddha of Immeasurable Light and Immeasurable Life, also the Tathāgata of Unhindered Light Tathāgata means “one who comes to us from the
Introducing Shinran and Maimonides 11 world of reality-as-is and whose sole purpose is the illumination of our darkness and its transformation.”20 Amida Buddha’s definition in terms of “immeasurable light” reflects the Buddhist understanding of light as a symbol of wisdom. For Shinran, the historical existence of Shakyamuni is of a rather limited significance, understood as the “manifestation of Amida, perhaps one among countless others.”21 The reason is that for Shinran, the key point is that wisdom-compassion underlies all enlightened existence, even the existence of Shakyamuni. In essence, Shinran maintains that Amida is the primordial Buddha who is beyond time. This brings us to the question of the origins of Amida Buddha. We already mentioned that for Shinran, Amida is the primordial Buddha who is beyond time. Here we turn to the trajectory of the idea of “Buddha” and its culmination in the image of Amida Buddha.
We recall that the idea of human compassion exemplified by Shakyamuni Gautama was born from the Indian historical environment of the fifth century BCE. After the death of the Buddha, there appeared more than twenty different schools of Buddhist thought. However, some of these schools vanished and/or became insignificant. By and large, Buddhism split into two great systems: Mahāyānist (“the great vehicle” of salvation) and Hinayanist (“small or insignificant vehicle” of salvation).22 Mahāyāna represented a more liberal and progressive approach than Hinayana/Theravada23 and became characterized by metaphysical and speculative thought. However, Mahāyāna Buddhism is not one unified phenomenon and, by and large, was a response to Theravada’s positions. It counter-distinguished itself from Theravada by viewing enlightenment as “a universal rather than individual accomplishment.”24
We know of Amida Buddha through the sutras supposedly preached by Shakyamuni, but this does not answer the ontological question of the source of this Amida Buddha. The Larger Sutra of Immeasurable Life, one of the foundational sacred texts of the Pure Land tradition, recalls the story of Amida Buddha. As with Mahāyāna Buddhism in general, the Pure Land tradition envisions each land representing the expression of a particular Buddha’s wisdom-compassion. To understand Amida Buddha, requires for us to turn to the Larger Sutra, according to which Shakyamuni told his followers the previously mentioned story of the Bodhisattva Hōzō. The narrative maintains that a certain king became so enthralled by the notions of compassion that he abandoned his throne and made vows as a Bodhisattva. This Bodhisattva, while able to attain his own enlightenment, felt a strong sense of compassion for those who, despite their persistent efforts, failed to achieve enlightenment. Hence, he vowed to hold back his own enlightenment until all sentient beings attained enlightenment. As he was examining the many pure lands, he vowed to establish a land specifically designated for those who are unable to attain enlightenment by using their own power or efforts. To seal his commitment, he undertook a series of the forty-eight vows,25 which spelled out both the conditions of Pure Land (jōdo), a “land imagined to be beyond karma”26 and the way to be reborn there. As he fulfilled his vows, he became the Buddha called Amida. The ethical implication is that the person of true entrusting mediates Amida’s compassion and in fact becomes “a carrier or even embodiment of Amida’s compassion.”27 Particularly significant for our discussion is the fact that if Amida is the epitome of ethics as expressed through his
compassion, those embraced by the Power of Amida’s compassionate Vow assume ethical standing as well. This non-discriminatory compassion later came to be perceived as the embrace of evil-doers alongside those who possess human goodness. So, the conventional distinction between traditionally conceived notions of “good” and “bad” changed its significance. This radical reinterpretation of this distinction is essential for our further exploration of Shinran’s conceptualization of human nature and the role of Amida Buddha in relation to it.
Shinran, contrary to the traditional narrative, radically alters certain elements in earlier Pure Land thought and devotion. Specifically, Shinran repeatedly refers to Dharmākara in the chapter on shinjin, which is defined as “‘true, real, and sincere heart and mind’ (makoto no kokoro).”28 The chapter on shinjin in Kyōgyōshinshō addresses shinjin by stating that “our attainment of shinjin29 arises from the heart and mind with which Amida Tathagata selected the Vow.”30 However, Shinran’s interpretation of Dharmākara reverses the traditional interpretation in which Amida Buddha is seen as the savior and the object of faith, to being the true subject of faith, hence transforming the subject/object paradigm. While this interpretation is not explicitly articulated by Shinran, it comes from Shinran’s description of Dharmākara as “the source and foundation of shinjn” hence not “exterior and eventual” but “interior and immediate to the believer.”31 This view is particularly relevant to our subsequent discussion of ethics and we note here that this internalization of Dharmākara leads humans to share aspiration of Dharmākara to affect liberation of all sentient beings: “the faithful take on the significance of Dharmākara through the transformative instant of awakening to the meaning and message contained in the name [of Amida Buddha].”32 Shinran’s view of the Buddha Amida was a direct result of his understanding of the concept of mappō and subsequently of Amida Buddha as the equivalent of human agency.
We recognize that the view of human agency is irreducible from the views of karma. Shinran’s own life conditions made him cognizant of life’s challenges and compassionate to those afflicted by negative karmic effects. His exposure to the common people led him to a more nuanced interpretations of such terms as “good” and “evil” and he did not use these in terms of people’s actions, but viewed karmic “evil” as “suffering and the awareness of suffering.”33 Shinran’s early works, although lacking sophistication of Kyōgyōshinshō, already demonstrated a humanistic focus driven by his aforementioned compassion for all beings. For instance, in Kangyoamidakyo-shuchu (annotated Amitayur-dhyana sutra) composed in 1217, he cited a passage from Le-pang-wen-lei written by Tsung-hsiao in 1200, in which he discussed the rebirth of the animal slaughterer. In medieval China, by the standards of that time, the animal slaughterer was considered unable to die a peaceful death. Shinran reflected on this story by arguing that it is entirely possible for a butcher to be saved through Pure Land faith. Here we can see the beginning seeds of Shinran’s Pure Land akunin-shōki’s theory—an ego-driven “bad person” theory.34 This theory is intricately connected to Shinran’s complex conceptualization of shinjin, which in addition holds that the realization of shinjin results in becoming bombu—a foolish being.35 This cognizance of human weakness and wickedness (one’s own and that
Introducing Shinran and Maimonides 13 of others) led him to realize the absolute or eternal truth of the Buddha Amida’s Vow, the Vow which was explicitly directed toward those whose karmic situation made it impossible for them to reach a place of enlightenment by their own efforts. For Shinran, that karmic situation was, however, shared by everyone living in the degenerated age of mappō.
In his Kyōgyōshinshō’s chapter on faith, which is admittedly one of its most important chapters, Shinran reflects and acknowledges the difficulty of overcoming human inclinations, including a propensity for violence and greed. Shinran refers to the Buddha’s compassion by turning to the story of the King’s discussion with Jīvaka:
When there is sickness among the seven children, although the father and the mother are concerned equally with all of them, nevertheless their hearts lean wholly toward the sick child. Great King, it is like this with the Tathāgata. It is not that there is no equality among all sentient beings, but his heart leans wholly toward the person who has committed evil.36
As its name alludes, Shin Buddhism by definition relates to a “pure land” (jōdo) which is defined broadly as “the field of a particular Buddha’s or Bodhisattva’s spiritual power” and narrowly as “the specific realm created by such a buddha when taking the Bodhisattva Vow to assist others.”37 The most important is the Eighteenth Vow—Primal Vow (hongan), the Vow of birth through the recitation of the name of Amida Buddha (shōmyō nenbutsu). This Vow expresses the desire to free all beings from the weight of karmic evil. In the Pure Land tradition, the recitation of the name of the Buddha Amida (shōmyō nenbutsu) nullifies one’s karmic evil and revokes karmic causation. Hence, any human attains the potentiality of enlightenment.
One’s views do not originate in vacuum and we turn here to the question of Shinran’s influences. From where did Shinran’s ideas derive and who affected his thought?
Shinran’s Seven Patriarchs
Shinran’s work demonstrates carefully argued religious logic largely informed by his views on human nature, including human imperfections. Human nature, prone to weakness and wickedness, exhibits an inability to know Buddhist reality (to be reborn hence to attain enlightenment) through one’s own efforts. In Shinran’s thought, this inability became an equalizer among all human beings, regardless of their wealth, social status, education, or heredity. To contextualize Shinran’s thought further, we turn now to a brief review of those whom Shinran considered his teachers, “Seven Patriarchs.”38
All these Seven Patriarchs are great masters of Buddhism and Shinran highly praised them all, quoting each one of them in The Hymn of True Faith. As we discussed, Shinran’s direct exposure to the Pure Land teaching was through his mentor,
Hōnen. Yet, the history of the Pure Land tradition goes back much further, and Shinran acknowledges the influence of the Seven Patriarchs. Prior to turning to the discussion of the Seven Patriarchs, we highlight once more the importance of Prince Shōtoku for the development of Shinran’s thought. The compassionate response of Amida Buddha to save people during mappō exemplifies Shinran’s interpretation of Prince Shōtoku’s ideals. We recall Shinran’s words:
Take refuge in Prince Shōtoku of the country of Japan! / Our indebtedness to his propagation of the Buddhist teachings is profound. / His compassionate activity to save sentient beings is far-reaching; / Do not lax in reverent praise of him!39
Ostensibly, Shinran’s veneration of Prince Shōtoku intersects with the myth of Prince Shōtoku’s image as the Bodhisattva of compassion Kannon.40
To understand better the influence of Shinran’s Indian Patriarchs requires us to briefly recall the thought of three major Mahāyāna Buddhist thinkers: Nāgārjuna (c. 150 CE), Asaṅga (c. 325 CE), and Vasubandhu (c. 325 CE). Mahāyāna Buddhism focused on the altruistic aim of assisting the spiritual development of all sentient beings. This led to a distinctive notion of the Bodhisattva characterized by altruism, compassion, and a desire to assist all sentient beings in their pursuit of enlightenment. Nāgārjuna, the most renowned Mādhyamika School41 sage, was Shinran’s first Indian Patriarch.42 Nāgārjuna affected the Mahāyāna Buddhist thought by making its focus more philosophical and less grounded in a specific historical figure. For Nāgārjuna, compassion served an ultimate aim of alleviating human suffering and he attempted to break down the dichotomous thinking that erroneously conceives of the world of suffering (samsāra) as distinct and separate from the world of enlightenment (nirvāna). As a result, the Mādhyamika School has viewed the samsaric world as ontologically identical with the world of enlightenment (nirvāna). Deluded humans fail to recognize that to destroy dichotomous thinking one must move beyond fixed categories and accept the non-substantiality of the self. While this was already argued by Shakyamuni, Nāgārjuna enhanced this recognition by rejecting all absolutes and pointing out the limits of dualistic thinking, which failed to take into account the interdependence and interchangeability of nirvāna and samsāra
This interpretation stemmed from Nāgārjuna’s view of two types of truths: conventional and ultimate. According to Nāgārjuna, all phenomena are empty of essence, of independence, and of substance. The ultimate truth is that the things are impermanent, interdependent, and have merely conventional, nominal identity. Ultimate and conventional truths from an ontological point of view are identical.43 Consistent with his rejection of any absolutes and given his view of emptiness, Nāgārjuna argued that the two types of truth are also interdependent. Nāgārjuna, however, accepted the idea that humans speak of many things as conventionally real (true) because they contain relational identities. This relationality is what Nāgārjuna calls interdependence (pratītya-samutpāda) and relates directly to his view of emptiness.44 While this thought reflected the traditional Buddhist concept of interdependence, Nāgārjuna enhanced it by proposing the
Introducing Shinran and Maimonides 15 further deconstruction (or maybe even destruction) of all absolutes, including, as mentioned, the rejection of the distinction between samsāra and nirvāna. In Nāgārjuna’s view, all distinctions are relative rather than absolute, including, what is particularly important to our discussion, the distinction between good and evil, or in other words, nothing is absolutely good or absolutely bad.45 Ultimate wisdom involves seeing the emptiness of things.46 This view affected Shinran’s view of human nature, specifically his conception of the akunin shōki as part of a “cluster” that we will discuss in the next chapter.
By challenging human perception, Nāgārjuna’s thought paved the way to the Yogācāra tradition’s thinkers such as Vasubandhu (fourth or fifth century CE) and his brother Asaṅga (c. 300–370 CE). Yogācāra tradition taught that “our ordinary perception and cognition construct illusory objects whose nature emerges when consciousness is purified.”47 Given Yogācāra’s view of human cognition and perception, these thinkers’ conceptions of Buddha were no longer tied to the historical, corporeal Buddha alone. Rather, these Yogācāra thinkers advanced a premise that posited the existence of the Buddha on three distinct levels, each having its own form of the body. The three bodies (Trikāya) are Dharmakāya (the Dharmabody of the Buddha as the highest, cosmic body),48 Sambhogakāya (as celestial bodies known through meditation and devotional practices), and nirmānakāya (as the physical and corporeal bodies appearing historically in this world as enlightened human beings).49 This school of thought allowed later thinkers to view nenbutsu—the practice of calling the Name of Amida Buddha—as a “provisional name” which “frees humans from the limits of ordinary consciousness and calls them back to their original identities as buddhas.”50 Both Shinran and Hōnen refer to Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu as their Indian “patriarchs.” In sum, Mahāyāna included the view of buddha as “cosmic processes” (the Buddha’s embodiments) and the idea of Bodhisattva 51
While Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu built “a bridge between the Mahayana Bodhisattva and Pure Land ideals,” it was the Chinese Pure Land masters, who were “concerned about the practicality and accessibility of their religion, [and who] adapted the Pure Land tradition to broaden its appeal.”52 Shinran’s Chinese patriarchs start with Tanluan (Jpn. Donran, 476–542).53 Being cognizant of the tribulation of the age of mappō, he maintains the need for a clear differentiation between the “easy” practice (as a reliance on the power of Amida Buddha’s vows) and the “difficult” practice (as a reliance on one’s own power).54 To draw this differentiation, Tanluan articulated the difference between jiriki (self-power) and tariki (otherpower) as the distinction between the “difficult” practice for the former and the “easy” practice for the latter which was a practice of entrusting oneself to the power of Amida’s Vow as the power outside oneself. In Tanluan’s view, jiriki reflected on human pride and ego’s influences and “brought the Pure Land tradition in line with the general Buddhist doctrine of no-ego; even he was claiming the usual Buddhist path was no longer effective.”55
Daochuo (Jpn.: Dōshaku, 562–645), the second of Shinran’s Chinese patriarchs, like Nāgārjuna and Tanluan, divided all the teachings of the Buddha into two
categories: the path of sages (difficult path) and the path of the Pure Land (easy path). While Daochuo followed Tanluan’s argumentation, he made it even more pointed by directing his assertions upon the age of mappō and arguing that selfpower (jiriki) is no longer conducive to attaining enlightenment and placing his emphasis on an “easy” path practice. Daochuo’s differentiation between jiriki and tariki was an assertion that tariki is the only true practice.
Shandao (Jpn.: Zendo, 613–681), Daochuo’s direct disciple added his focus on human nature as “karmically corrupted through the accumulation of negative propensities.”56 He supported Daochuo’s focus on the nenbutsu but also insisted on the importance of the state of one’s mind and argued that a proper attitude of entrusting oneself to Amida’s Vow revolves around “three mindful hearts”: sincerity, profundity, and a desire for rebirth in the Pure Land which result from right kinds of practice.57 He argued for ten soundings or voicings (as invocations of Amida’s name) rather than ten thoughts. (The nen of nenbutsu ordinarily means “holding in mind”; so Shandao was deliberately shifting the traditional emphasis). Shandao also emphasized repentance and considered all men (including himself) to be evil. However, as it was in the case of Tanluan, Shandao continued to assign the substantial role to self-power (jiriki) despite holding that because of human evilness the only appropriate practice is one of other-power (tariki). In Shandao’s and subsequently Hōnen’s thought, shinjn became perceived interchangeably with the nenbutsu. 58
Genshin (942–1017) was Shinran’s first Japanese born patriarch of the Pure Land tradition. Genshin aimed to popularize the Shin Buddhism teachings by blending its monastic elements with elements suited for lay people. Genshin accepted the possibility that lay people can attain birth in the Pure Land through the process of vocalization of nenbutsu rather than contemplative nenbutsu. Specific to Genshin’s influence on Shinran’s thought, Shinran drew on his spirit of “deep self-reflection and sensitivity to defiling passions.”59 Genshin’s approach, however, was on instilling fear of hell.60 His way to the Pure Land required the “fivefold practice of nenbutsu”: worship of Amida and his land, praise as meditation and oral praise, mastering of the Buddhist teachings, meditation, and merit dedication.61 The most important practices, according to Genshin, were contemplative nenbutsu (meditation of Buddha’s marks and features) and invocational nenbutsu (calling upon Amida’s name).62
We note that the Seven Patriarchs are clearly marked by their differences in approaches and Nāgārjuna, Vasubandhu, Tanluan, and Genshin remained “practitioners of the path of the sages63 their whole lives long. The other-power doctrine’s link with their life looks extremely tenuous.”64 We also note that there is a tradition within Shin doctrinal studies from the Edo period that assigns a certain relative importance to these patriarchs by considering Nāgārjuna, Vasubandhu, and Tanluan to base their teachings on the Contemplation Sutra; and Daochuo, Shandao, Genshin, and Hōnen on the Vow from the Larger Sutra in which the Primal Vow was revealed.65 Hōnen was Shinran’s main influence as he indisputably impacted Shinran’s thought most significantly. Shinran viewed his encounter with Hōnen as the “encounter with the yoki hito (the ‘good person,’ or ‘master brings me grace’).”66
Hōnen
We turn here to a brief excursion into Hōnen’s life. Hōnen was a thirteen-year-old monk when he went to Mount Hiei to study the Tendai doctrines. At the age of seventeen, he moved to a holy site to a life of seclusion and stayed there until he turned twenty-four. He then moved to Kyoto to learn from the eminent monks of different Buddhist schools, but never felt that these teachings were meeting his spiritual needs. In Kyoto, he was faced with the contrast between the suffering of the common people and the magnificence of the Buddhist temples. Driven by his spiritual desire to reconcile this contrast, at the age of forty-three, started Jōdo Shū Hōnen, advocated belief in the power of the Amida’s Vow and the recitation of Amida’s name (the practice of the nenbutsu) as the sole means for birth in Amida Buddha’s Pure Land.
The popularity of Hōnen’s nenbutsu teaching drew attention from the Buddhist establishment. In 1186, a leading Tendai monk Kenshin requested Hōnen to address some of his questions. A dialogue between Kenshin and Hōnen drew approximately 300 attendees. Hōnen claimed to win this debate. As a result of this debate, Hōnen’s approach spread throughout the country. Hōnen articulated the core of his nenbutsu practice in the Collection on Nenbutsu compiled in 1198. The purpose of this collection was to “clarify for the ignorant, weak, and karmically defiled the means of deliverance through recitation of nenbutsu, while at the same time confronting the established Buddhist schools of the Nara and Heian periods.”67
Hōnen’s teachings challenged the prevailing Tendai’s view of the Pure Land thought by articulating the nenbutsu practice as exclusive nenbutsu (senju nenbutsu), as an independent and self-sufficient path of Buddhist practice. He proposed a radical redefinition of Buddhist practice by removing the focus on austere meditation practices for gaining positive karmic effects. Hōnen was greatly influenced by Shandao, who, following Vasubandhu, maintained that in order to be reborn in the Pure Land, the recitation should always be accompanied by one’s mental state characterized by the three minds: the sincere mind (shijōshin), the profound mind (jinshin), and the mind that transfers all merit toward rebirth in the Pure Land (ekōhotsuganshin). For Hōnen, these three mental states became identical with the recitation itself. Hence reciting the name of Amida Buddha meant assuming the state of the three minds. Recognizing that at the age of the mappō humans are incapable of attaining enlightenment on their own, Hōnen consolidated all religious practice into the act of reciting Amida Buddha’s name. Since man cannot predict the moment of his death, Hōnen favored continuous recitation and connected recitation to one’s death. He recommended as many recitations as possible since for him, while it is true that one recitation or ten will equally bring about rebirth, its frequency increased the merit that one can accrue and ensure the rebirth in the Pure Land. Hōnen linked nenbutsu to gaining spiritual merit and claimed that when one recites the nenbutsu, all of one’s negative karmic actions, however heavy, are expunged, an approach that was later rejected by Shinran. Although Hōnen elevated the practice of recitation to an unprecedented level, he did not fully abandon the traditional Buddhist practice
embedded in the principle of the self-power (jiriki) since, as mentioned, he still perceived the practice of recitation as a merit-producing act.
Hōnen recognized that his confrontation with the established Buddhist schools could result in challenges and he wrote that “It is my earnest wish that once you have read this work [Collection on Nenbutsu], you should conceal it in a mud wall and never leave it by your window.”68 As his teaching continued to spread, some erroneously interpreted his teachings as his permission to indulge in wine and meat and not to follow central Buddhist precepts. This led the monks on Mount Hiei to prohibit the nenbutsu practice. In November 1204, Hōnen responded by issuing the Monition on Seven Articles in which he aimed to correct the misunderstanding of his teaching. There he pointed out that he had no intention to undermine the prevailing Shingon and Tendai schools. He also stated that the practice of nenbutsu does not allow committing adultery, or breaking Buddhist dietary restrictions. Most significantly, he insisted that “the ignorant must not willingly teach nenbutsu, preach falsity without fundamental knowledge of the true Dharma.”69 Hōnen’s aim was to emphasize the fact that he had “no intention to dispute with the monks of other more traditional schools.”70
However, Hōnen’s teaching, at least implicitly, questioned the Tendai school’s focus on the significance of merit transfer and self-power (jiriki). As his teaching of the exclusive nenbutsu spread throughout the country, old temples at Mt. Hiei and in Nara tried to prevent the further dissemination of this practice. Particularly troublesome for the Buddhist establishment was the fact that Hōnen never differentiated in his teaching practices between the monks and the lay people, men and women, and the aristocrats and common folks. This lack of differentiation was perceived as a challenge to the traditional Buddhist institution since it ultimately ensured everyone’s access to the sacred. Hōnen’s approach was seen as a “religious democratization.” Already in 1204, the priests of Mt. Hiei appealed to the chief abbot to abolish the exclusive nenbutsu practice.
In 1207, when two ladies of the court secretly converted to Pure Land Buddhism after attending a special nenbutsu retreat held by Hōnen’s disciples, Hōnen and his main disciples, including Shinran, were exiled from Kyoto to different remote parts of Japan. Shinran’s tenure with Hōnen was short since he never saw Hōnen again after being exiled. “The transformation from the meditative nenbutsu to the vocal nenbutsu was a major shift in Buddhism’s historical development”71 and Shinran’s role became particularly significant in the further development of this shift. We note here that it was Shinran who “turned Shandao’s and Hōnen’s nenbutsu as ‘daily duty’ into a nenbutsu of spontaneous gratitude and Nāgārjuna’s and Genshin’s Path of Sages’ observance of the precepts into the easy human path of the King’s Law.”72 Hōnen’s teachings led to be perceived as dangerous and he and his followers seen as undermining the existing order and hence their influence had to be curtailed. As in many other historical instances, the ones who carried dissident thought had to be exiled. The exilic period led to Shinran’s crystallization of his thought since it allowed him not only to observe the life from the outside of the monastic confinement but threw him directly into a life as a lay person. We already mentioned the centrality
Introducing Shinran and Maimonides 19
of Amida Buddha’s significance in Shinran’s views, particularly in relation to his compassion. We also mentioned that as Amida Buddha made forty-eight vows,73 he established a Pure Land (Jōdo). We turn now to a quick discussion of Shinran’s view of “pure land” followed by the discussion of the Primal Vow (hongan).
Shinran’s Version of Shin Buddhism
Shinran was particularly attracted to the non-discriminative nature of this tradition. However, for Shinran, contrary to his predecessors, the practice of the invocation of the name, shōmyō nenbutsu was much less significant than attaining the sincere mind (shinjn). It is sincerity and spontaneity (jinen) that Shinran emphasized, not any form of calculative thinking (hakarai).74 In other words, for Shinran, shinjin cannot be attained through one’s own deliberation (hakarai). It arises instead by the working of jinen, spontaneously and genuinely. We note in passing here that for Shinran, hakarai (used to justify one’s actions) can lead to the perpetuation violence: “the resolution of issues of violence must lie in the arising of insight into the nature of the ego-self and can never be achieved through assertion and affirmation of self-will.”75 Nonetheless, two of the concepts addressed by all Seven Patriarchs became particularly prominent in Shinran’s thought, namely, the Amida Buddha’s name, or more specifically, the recitation of his name, or practice of the nenbutsu; and the differentiation between self-power (jiriki) and other-power (tariki). These concepts led Shinran to define shinjin in a dramatically new and unorthodox way since, rather than defining it as “faith,”76 it became described, as mentioned, in relation to “true, real, and sincere heart and mind.”77 The concept of trust, as we will see, is significant to Shinran’s thought as it relates to entrusting oneself to the Amida’s Primal Vow as well.
While it would be incorrect to argue that Shinran’s reform of Buddhist practice started only during his exile, it did, however, help him to crystallize certain of his contentions which resulted in some radical changes. Shinran’s own experience of exclusion from a monastic community, together with his refusal to be merely a layman either, resulted in the need to reinvent his identity and increased his sensitivity to the issues of inclusion. His firsthand familiarity with exile enlarged his awareness of the arbitrariness of judgments about good and evil and contributed to his amplified compassion for all sentient beings. While remaining committed and devoted to these ideals, this experience further informed his thought and his dedication to ordinary men and women. The ordinary people who followed Shinran’s teaching were spared anxiety over salvation and continual rebirth. This angst was alleviated with the relocation of the center of agency to the Buddha Amida. Shinran refers to the Sutra of Salvation through the Perfect Enlightenment of Amida,
Among those who see it [Amida’s immeasurable light], there is none that does not come to possess a heart of compassion and rejoice. Among all beings in the world who are possessed of licentious desires or wrath or folly, there is none who, on seeing Amida Buddha’s light, does not perform good acts.78
As we continue our exploration of Shinran’s thought, we will continue wrestling with the meaning of the effects of exile on such issues as tolerance, exclusion, and inclusion alongside with the issues of good and evil. But who exactly was Shinran’s reading audience and why did he aim to communicate his thought?
Shinran’s Genres in Writing and His Intended Audience
Most of Shinran’s writing was done in the latter part of his life when his thought crystalized after much self-reflection. His writing exhibits at least four distinct genres. His magnum opus Kyōgyōshinshō was written in 1247 when Shinran was seventy-five years old. It is considered his most philosophical work with the intended audience of “the scholar-monk or intellectual.”79 However, most of his other writing was directed toward ordinary Pure Land followers with the exception of the Jōdo monrui jushō (“Passages on the Pure Land Way”). His Ichinen Tanen mon’i (“Notes on ‘Once-Calling and Many-Calling’”), Yuishinshō—mon’i (“Notes on ‘Essentials of Faith Alone’”), the three Wasan (Hymns), his letters,80 particularly the Mattōshō (“Lamp for the Latter Ages”), Tanninshō (“A Record in Lament of Divergences”) and Gutokushō (“Gutoku’s Notes”) all were written with the ordinary people in mind. These writings were animated by the idea that what might appear simple on surface can be quite challenging to understand. This notion is manifested by the fact that two of the works (Yuishinshō—mon’i and Ichinen Tanen mon’i) conclude with exactly the same words:
That people of the countryside, who do not know the meaning of written characters and who are painfully and hopelessly ignorant, may easily understand, I have repeated the same things over and over. The educated will probably find this writing peculiar and may ridicule it. But I am paying no heed to such criticisms; I write only that ignorant people may grasp their meaning.81
Rather than interpreting these words as being elitist, they demonstrate that “[t]he truth is simple but not necessarily so easy to grasp because we are led astray by our attachment to words and letters.”82 However, by making his writing accessible to the ordinary people does not mean that Shinran had any intention of “devaluing the intellect.”83 Even Kyōgyōshishō, which includes a systematic study of Pure Land doctrine and is intended for scholar-monks, shows that by periodically including his own name in the discussion, Shinran aimed to make this work more personal, personable, and accessible to all.84
MAIMONIDES
Moses Maimonides85 was born in Cordoba, Andalusia, in 1138,86 which was then an Arabic metropolis. Maimonides’ life, like Shinran’s, can also be roughly divided into four periods: the Andalusian period (1136/1138–1148); the Almohadian
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