Shinran

Shinran (1173–1262). The founder of the Jōdo Shinshū (True Pure Land school), the largest of Japan's schools of Buddhism. Shinran was the son of a minor government bureaucrat. It seems that his family had fallen out of favour with the government due to some doings of his grandfather's, and so his own chances for a good career appeared slight. For this and possibly other reasons, he joined the monastic order at the age of 9. Shortly after ordination, he went to Mt. Hiei, and became a dōsō, a monk who practises the perpetual nembutsu, a practice whereby one undertook strenuous 90-day retreat periods in which one circumambulated an image of Amitābha while reciting the nembutsu without respite. He kept this up until he was 29 years old, and then left Mt. Hiei to join Hōnen's movement in 1201 and remained with him until both were exiled from the capital to different areas in 1207. The two men never met again, and throughout the remainder of his life Shinran claimed he was merely transmitting his master's teachings without innovation. Shinran's exile proved to be a decisive moment for the formation of his teachings. He was 35 years old at the time, and from the age of 9 had known no other life than that of a monk. Now defrocked, he was free from government monastic regulations and duties, and yet he had not freely chosen the lay life for himself. He felt like he was neither here nor there, and called his lifestyle ‘hisō hizoku’, ‘neither monk nor layman’. He also married during this time, another act which was to have profound consequences for the future of his movement. The school to which he gave rise is the only one whose authority centres on a direct blood line from its founder.

Shinran was pardoned in 1211, and in 1214 moved to the Kantō area where he had a major religious experience. He had taken a vow to chant the three sūtras of the Pure Land school 1,000 times for the benefit of sentient beings. But after only four or five days of this, he gave up. It had suddenly struck him how presumptuous it was of him to think that he could do anything at all to help sentient beings in their suffering. He came to realize that one single recitation of the nembutsu was enough, if it was done in faith. While still living in the Kantō region, he began to work out his theology in a more systematic manner, which led to the completion of his major statement in 1224, a book called the Kyōgyōshinshō, or ‘Teaching, Practice, Faith, and Attainment’. This was mostly a compendium of passages from earlier Buddhist literature arranged topically for reference, and sometimes Shinran added his own comments to them. He worked on this for 30 years, constantly adding to it and refining it. With new confidence now, he moved among the masses, teaching them to put their trust in Amida Buddha for their salvation, reciting the nembutsu with the three states of mind listed in the Longer Sukhāvatī-vyūha Sūtra: sincerity, faith, and the aspiration for rebirth in the Pure Land. He propagated his teaching by establishing local congregations in private homes known as ‘nembutsu dōjō’, or ‘Buddha-recitation halls’. He never formally took any followers, and indeed did not claim any special knowledge or privilege not shared by any other believer. By repudiating any of the traditional honours normally accorded by disciples to their master, he set up one of the most egalitarian movements in east Asian Buddhist history. Eventually, this method of organization began to work against Shinran, especially when he left the Kantō region and returned to Kyoto. Since each congregation was autonomous, and there was no centralized authority to maintain control and standards, the only thing holding the movement together was Shinran's own personality. Since he was now far away from his congregations in Kantō, problems developed as some local leaders became authoritarian, or began mis-spending funds, or propagating doctrines of their own, or simply fell into the common trap of believing that the saving grace of Amitābha made conventional morality superfluous (a heresy called ‘licensed evil’). He wrote letters and essays deploring these abuses, which were later collected into an anthology called the Tannishō (Lamenting the Deviations). In one of the most painful experiences of his life, Shinran was even forced to disown his own son, Zenran. He had dispatched Zenran to Kantō to settle some of these disputes, but while there, Zenran began proclaiming that his father had given him secret teachings, and tried to set himself up in the very master–disciple relationships with them that Shinran himself had rejected. After much correspondence back and forth, it soon became obvious that he had to take the drastic step of disowning Zenran in order to bring the misunderstandings to a definitive conclusion. Shinran died at the age of 90 not long afterwards.