JODO SHINSHU IN AMERICAN SOCIETY

The depersonalization of modern life highlights the importance of human personality and its power to shape events, whether for good or ill. The demagogue, or charismatic leader, attracts wide attention. Despite problems in this phenomenon, any claim for the validity of a way of life must be able to point to its realization in the life of a person.

Shinran’s life provides us with an example and a guideline for people living in disturbed, uncertain times. His life unfolded in the context of the turmoil of the Kamakura period (1185-1332), and he experienced spiritual frustration and disillusionment with the life and institutions of his day. Nevertheless, out of his despair, he found a way to a meaning that has become the basis of our Jodo Shinshu tradition. We will look at the contours of his character and attitudes as the basis of our own way of life.

1. Shinran had self-knowledge.

He knew himself as passion-ridden. He made poignant confessions of his own limitations and weaknesses. We have his Hymns of Lament ( Shozomatsu Wasan , 94-96):

Although I have taken refuge in the true teaching,

The mind of truth hardly exists in me;

Moreover, I am so false-hearted and untrue

That there cannot be any mind of purity.

Each of us shows an outward appearance

Of being wise, good, and diligent,

Possessing so much greed, anger, and wrong views,

We are filled with all kinds of deceit.

My evilness is truly difficult to renounce;

The mind is like serpents and scorpions.

Even doing virtuous deeds is tainted with poison,

And so is called false practice.

He did not criticize others before he criticized himself.

He was unusual as a religious leader in confessing his own problems. When Yuiembo complained about his own lack of faith and confidence ( Tannisho , 9), Shinran declared: I also had the same problem. In the Kyogyoshinsho, he makes it very clear that he is “sunk in the vast sea of lust and lost in the great mountain of desire for fame and profit.” He does not “rejoice in joining the group of the Rightly Established State, nor do I enjoy coming near to the true Enlightenment. What a shame! What a sorrow!” (Ryukoku Translation Series [RTS] , v.5, p. 132)

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