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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 the historical, corporeal Buddha alone. Rather, these Yogācāra thinkers advanced a premise that posited the existence of the Buddha on three distinct levels, each having its own form of the body. The three bodies (Trikāya) are Dharmakāya (the Dharma-body of the Buddha as the highest, cosmic body),⁴⁸ Sambhogakāya (as celestial bodies known through meditation and devotional practices), and nirmānakāya (as the physical and corporeal bodies appearing historically in this world as enlightened human beings).⁴⁹ This school of thought allowed later thinkers to view nenbutsu—the practice of calling the Name of Amida Buddha—as a “provisional name” which “frees humans from the limits of ordinary consciousness and calls them back to their original identities as buddhas.”⁵⁰ Both Shinran and Hōnen refer to Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu as their Indian “patriarchs.” In sum, Mahāyāna included the view of buddha as “cosmic processes” (the Buddha’s embodiments) and the idea of Bodhisattva.⁵¹

      While Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu built “a bridge between the Mahayana Bodhisattva and Pure Land ideals,” it was the Chinese Pure Land masters, who were “concerned about the practicality and accessibility of their religion, [and who] adapted the Pure Land tradition to broaden its appeal.”⁵² Shinran’s Chinese patriarchs start with Tanluan (Jpn. Donran, 476–542).⁵³ Being cognizant of the tribulation of the age of mappō, he maintains the need for a clear differentiation between the “easy” practice (as a reliance on the power of Amida Buddha’s vows) and the “difficult” practice (as a reliance on one’s own power).⁵⁴ To draw this differentiation, Tanluan articulated the difference between jiriki (self-power) and tariki (other-power) as the distinction between the “difficult” practice for the former and the “easy” practice for the latter which was a practice of entrusting oneself to the power of Amida’s Vow as the power outside oneself. In Tanluan’s view, jiriki reflected on human pride and ego’s influences and “brought the Pure Land tradition in line with the general Buddhist doctrine of no-ego; even he was claiming the usual Buddhist path was no longer effective.”⁵⁵

      Daochuo (Jpn.: Dōshaku, 562–645), the second of Shinran’s Chinese patriarchs, like Nāgārjuna and Tanluan, divided all the teachings of the Buddha into two categories: the path of sages (difficult path) and the path of the Pure Land (easy path). While Daochuo followed Tanluan’s argumentation, he made it even more pointed by directing his assertions upon the age of mappō and

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