Shinran

Dzieła

• ok. 1224Nauka, praktyka, wiara i urzeczywistnienie (Kyōgyōshinshō)

  Główne dzieło Shinrana, kompilacja fragmentów pism z komentarzem: przebudzenie jest w całości darem ślubowania Amidy.

Stanowisko

Shinran radicalised Hōnen’s teaching. In the age of the decline of the Dharma, he held, no one can reach awakening by self-power (jiriki); birth in the Pure Land comes entirely from the other-power (tariki) of Amida Buddha’s vow to save all beings. Even the entrusting heart (shinjin) is Amida’s gift, and reciting the nembutsu becomes an expression of gratitude rather than a means. The Tannishō, compiled by his disciple Yuien, records his famous paradox: if even the good are born in the Pure Land, how much more the wicked, who know they cannot save themselves. His school became one of Japan’s largest; Tanabe later built his metanoetics on Shinran.

Życie i kontekst

Born in 1173 near Kyoto into minor nobility, Shinran trained for some twenty years as a Tendai monk on Mount Hiei. In 1201 he became a disciple of Hōnen, who taught reliance on the nembutsu alone. When the court suppressed the movement in 1207, Shinran was defrocked and exiled to Echigo, where he married. After decades of teaching in eastern Japan he died in Kyoto in 1263.

Dalsze główne dzieła

• Teaching, Practice, Faith and Realization (Kyōgyōshinshō, first draft traditionally dated 1224, revised later)
• Hymns of the Pure Land (Jōdo wasan, 1248)
• Lamenting the Deviations (Tannishō, late 13th century, recorded by his disciple Yuien)