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 Kangyo-amidakyo-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 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 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
