Shinran

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

Amida is compassion that calls, and also the form of the formless

Both personal and impersonalStated explicitly

For Shinran, the ultimate manifests as Amida, the Buddha of Immeasurable Light and Immeasurable Life, whose Vow seeks out and embraces beings: a face that knows and calls. But Amida is not a creator god, and Shinran does not stop at the face. Following Tanluan, in his Notes on «Essentials of Faith Alone» he distinguishes a dharma-body as suchness, without colour or form, and a dharma-body as compassionate means, from which the bodhisattva Dharmākara and his Vow arise. In the brief On Jinen Hōni he says it more plainly: the supreme Buddha is formless, and Amida is the means by which we come to know that reality which works of itself (jinen). The personal face is true, but it is the form the formless takes to reach beings.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

No speculation on the self: he knows himself a fool full of passions

Did not address it

Shinran does not pronounce on the ontology of the self; he takes the Buddhist framework for granted and does not discuss it. What he says of himself is of another order: existential and moral. He calls himself Gutoku, the foolish bald one; in the Hymns of the Dharma Ages he confesses that, though he has taken refuge in the true teaching, he is false and insincere and there is no trace of a pure heart in him. In the chapter on shinjin of the Kyōgyōshinshō he takes from Shandao the two sides of deep faith: recognising oneself as an ordinary being, bound by karma from time without beginning, with no way out by one's own powers, and trusting at the same time that Amida's Vow embraces one. Who am I, for Shinran, is answered in the light of the Vow, not by introspection.

Why do we suffer?

We are beings bound by blind passions, unable to escape by our own power

Craving and attachmentStated explicitly

Shinran locates the root of suffering in the blind passions (bonnō) that fill the ordinary being until the last moment of life, and in the karma carried from a beginningless past. What is specific to his diagnosis is what he adds: in the final age of the Dharma, lamented in his Hymns of the Dharma Ages, no one can cut off those passions by their own effort. The Tannishō, compiled by his disciple Yuien, attributes to him the idea that the good and evil we do depend on past karma more than on our will. Hence the remedy is not a discipline but Amida's Vow, which embraces beings as they are, without requiring them first to stop suffering or desiring.

What happens after death?

With shinjin, birth is already settled: at death one attains nirvana

Eternal life and resurrectionStated explicitly

For Shinran, whoever has received shinjin is already, in this life, among those whose birth in the Pure Land is assured. That is why, in the first of the letters collected in Lamp for the Latter Ages, he holds that one need not wait for the hour of death nor rely on Amida's coming at the deathbed, as other schools taught: birth is settled at the moment shinjin arises. At death the ordinary being is born in the Pure Land, which for Shinran is not a paradise of enjoyment but the immediate realisation of great nirvana, as the chapter on realisation of the Kyōgyōshinshō sets out. And from there one returns to this world to guide others.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

Not even faith is one's own merit: all is the work of Amida's Vow

Through grace and loveStated explicitly

Shinran takes the doctrine of other-power (tariki) further than anyone in his tradition. Birth in the Pure Land depends not on practices, merits or virtues but on Amida's Vow; and shinjin itself is not an act of the practitioner but Amida's mind given to him, as the third chapter of the Kyōgyōshinshō argues. Even the nembutsu is the activity of the name, not an effort. Hence the sentence the Tannishō attributes to him: if even the good person attains birth, how much more the evil one, because whoever relies on good works still leans on their own power. The human being neither prepares nor cooperates: he receives, and responds with gratitude.

Is a teacher necessary?

He has no disciples: all are companions receiving the same Vow

Community and traditionStated explicitly

Shinran acknowledges an immense debt to his teacher Hōnen: according to the Tannishō, he said that even if Hōnen had deceived him and he fell into hell for saying the nembutsu, he would have no regrets. And he devoted the Hymns of the Pure Land Masters to the seven patriarchs who transmitted the teaching from India onwards. But he refuses to occupy the place of teacher himself: the same text attributes to him the sentence «I, Shinran, do not have a single disciple», because shinjin is given by no human being but by Amida. Those who listen with him are companions on the way (dōbō), and the teaching lives in that community of equals and in the texts that transmit it, not in a personal authority.

Is the world real?

This world is a burning house; only the nembutsu is true

Appearance over the one realityStated explicitly

Shinran does not develop a metaphysics of the world, but he judges it harshly. In the epilogue of the Tannishō, his disciple Yuien records a sentence he attributes to him: for an ordinary being full of passions, in this impermanent world, which is like a burning house, all things are empty and false, with nothing true; only the nembutsu is true. The Hymns of the Dharma Ages also describe the period as the final age, in which the teaching declines and practices no longer bear fruit. The world is real as a place of suffering and karma, but lacks ultimate truth; the only true thing is what comes from Amida's Vow, and the Pure Land is a realm of light beyond any conceivable form.

What is love?

Our compassion falls short; only Amida's saves all

Boundless compassionStated explicitly

Shinran is clear-sighted about the limits of human love. The fourth chapter of the Tannishō attributes to him a distinction between two compassions: that of the path of sages, which consists in pitying, loving and caring for beings, but rarely manages to save them completely; and that of the Pure Land, which consists in saying the nembutsu, swiftly attaining buddhahood and, with great compassion, freely benefiting beings. However much one loves and pities in this life, that love does not persevere. True compassion is Amida's, whose Vow, according to a sentence the same text's epilogue attributes to him, was for him, Shinran, alone. The human response is gratitude and return to the world after birth.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

Nothing rests on one's calculation: evil comes from karma, salvation from the Vow

There is no doerStated explicitly

Shinran radically distrusts self-will where salvation is concerned. In On Jinen Hōni he explains that birth in the Pure Land comes about of itself (jinen), without the practitioner's calculation (hakarai), because it is the working of the Vow; shinjin itself is given, not chosen. The Tannishō, compiled by Yuien, further attributes to him the idea that the good and evil we do depend on the conditions of past karma: if conditions led to it, one might kill a thousand people. But Shinran does not draw a licence from this: in his letters he rebukes those who justify evil by the Vow, like someone who takes poison because an antidote exists.

Why meditate or pray?

The nembutsu is neither practice nor merit: it is gratitude to one who embraces

Friendship with GodStated explicitly

Shinran does not teach meditation: he regards meditative practices and good works as efforts of self-power, insufficient in the final age. What remains is the nembutsu, saying the name of Amida. But its meaning changes completely: according to the Tannishō, for the one who says it, it is neither a practice nor a good act, because it is not done by one's own calculation and produces no merit. In the chapter on practice of the Kyōgyōshinshō he presents it as the working of the name itself, transferred by the Vow. Saying it is, at bottom, a response of gratitude to a compassion that has already embraced the person, as the opening lines of the Shōshinge express: I take refuge in the Tathāgata of Immeasurable Life.

Can reason know the ultimate?

The sutras and the masters, not one's own judgement, show the way

Scripture and reasoningStated explicitly

Shinran's major work, the Kyōgyōshinshō, is largely an anthology: it gathers passages from the sutras and from the masters of India, China and Japan, and orders and comments on them to show the true teaching. His method is scriptural: authority lies in the Larger Sutra of Immeasurable Life, which reveals the Vow, and in the chain of the seven patriarchs. Shinran interprets with great freedom, sometimes reading the Chinese in unusual ways to draw out a new sense, but he does not appeal to autonomous reason; he distrusts one's own calculation (hakarai), which he treats as a way of leaning on self-power. The ultimate, nirvana or what is naturally so, lies beyond what the mind can conceive.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

Neither monk nor layman: ordinary family life is the place of the Vow

Contemplation in actionStated explicitly

Shinran broke with the monastic model in which he had trained for twenty years on Mount Hiei. After the exile of 1207 he declared himself, in the epilogue of the Kyōgyōshinshō, neither monk nor layman, and took as his surname the character for «bald». He married, had children and lived among peasants and ordinary people in the Kantō region, where the first communities formed. Since Amida's Vow embraces beings as they are, there is no need to abandon ordinary life to receive it: the home, the trade and the family are the place where shinjin is lived and answered with gratitude. He preached no organised social action, but no withdrawal either.