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 non-elite 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 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 shinjin 29 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.
