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Jodo Shinshu: The Way of Shinran


(Japanese National Treasure; courtesy of Itsukushima-Jinja)

Over the past few years, Tricycle has featured a number of articles about Jodo Shinshu, or Shin Buddhism, which developed from the insight of Shinran (1173-1263), a Japanese monk that Rev. Dr. Alfred Bloom calls a "towering figure" in Buddhism. Read the articles below to get a sense of Shinran and his teachings, and the modern practice of Jodo Shinshu.

Daibutsu. the Great Buddha of Kamakura:

Daibutsu - The Great Buddha of Kamakura from kedarvideo on Vimeo.

OTHER RESOURCES

The Eastern Buddhist is a journal started by D. T. Suzuki in 1921. Suzuki became a Shin practitioner in later life and wrote the influential book Shin Buddhism (Chapters 1 & 2 available here in PDF, 6 MB) which was later retitled "Buddha of Infinite Light."

Monshu Koshin Ohtani's book "The Buddha's Wish for the World," released on the occasion of the 750th memorial for Shinran Shonin, is available on Amazon and Facebook. An excerpt from this book is available here.

The Buddhist Churches of America (BCA) has a great bookstore, which is the perfect spot to look for books on Shin Buddhism.

The four websites below are valuable resources on the practice of Shin Buddhism, as well as the life of Shinran Shonin, and the history of Buddhism in Japan:

American Buddhist Study Center

Jodo-Shinshu Buddhism: Dharma for the Modern Age

Jodo Shinshu Center, Berkeley, California

Jodo Shinshu Nishi Hongwanji

 

Namu Amida Butsu!

Comments

Thanks!

Oh! I may not have found that Born Again Buddhist link if it were not for this. Thanks!

It has some overtones for me, in the fact that I have a traditional Judeo-Christian upbringing. It disturbs my peers when I talk about Buddhism, especially since I seem to talk about my practice with the same fervor as some of the spiritual contemporaries of their own faith.

Anyway, thank you again for sharing. Will check out the Buddha's Wish book on Amazon.

Regards,

Frank
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Birth in the Pure Land as Green Liberation

ClarkStrand's picture
Discussion
Leader

I like your observation about Shinran, Scott:

In another departure from more traditional Pure Land schools of Buddhism, Shinran Shonin advocated that birth in the Pure Land was settled in the midst of life rather than at death. When one entrusts oneselves to Amida Buddha birth there is settled at that moment. This is equivalent to the stage of non-retrogression along the bodhisattva path, a characteristic of Mahayana Buddhism, or shinjin.

In my own way of thinking, Shinran's teaching can be interpreted to mean that, at the very moment we entrust ourselves to the planetary ecological processes that necessarily embrace all life, and from which therefore nothing is ever excluded (or "forsaken," to use Shinran's word), at that moment we experience our birth in the Pure Land as "settled."

It has always impressed me that Shinran requested his body be fed to the fishes of the Kamo River when he died. This didn't happen of course. The nembutsu devotee he modeled his life on, Kyoshin, could have his body devoured by dogs a few centuries earlier, but mostly because he died in relative obscurity in an outlying agricultural region. Shinran had many devoted disciples by the time of his death, and so instead of Nature we get a stupa.

Nature, it seems to me, is the real stupa and the real teaching. I do believe that Shiran understood this, albeit in terms of a spiritual symbol, rather than an ecological one. Today, however, I firmly believe that he would speak of Amida in terms of ecological/evolutionary processes from which nothing is left over and nothing is left out.

details

Hi,

I am a JS Buddhist, and am grateful Shinran's teachings are being shared in this medium! So much of Buddhism in North America is Tibetan or Zen, so thank you for highlighting these things on Jodo Shinshu.

Just wanted to let you know that in your article above, there were a couple of misspellings of names. In the link to Bishop Ogui's article, it should be SOCHO KOSHIN Ogui. As well, the introduction to Gomonshu's book "The Buddha's wish for the world" his name should be spelled OHTANI. It's a great book, by the way!

In Gassho

Dharmanet's Shin Page

Dharmanet has a good page too: http://dharmanet.org/Shin_lib.htm

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