Why Anarchists Like Zen? A Libertarian Reading of Shinran (1173–1263)^105
Thus, Shinran’s example proves how an awareness of the ultimate
relativity of morality does not involve a necessary bow to the es-
tablished order, but can also be used to challenge it and, arguably,
transform it. In the same way that Shinran stands up against what
he judges to be injustice, the Jodo Shinshu anarchist can use her or
his relative judgment to articulate strategies of resistance.
Following the analogy of the Christian “right of private judg-
ment” the relative judgment of Shinran or the practitioner is
informed or infused by the subjective experience of tariki. A sub-
versive agency ought to come about as an interplay of both the
enlightened design of the Buddha and the relative and contingent
design of the practitioner. Shinran’s actions can be said to pro-
vide an instance of that interplay of wills or agencies. Whereas his
relationships reflect a freer and more decentralized spirit found-
ed in tariki, he also considers pragmatic implications and acts in
relation to an implicit and culturally received moral sensibility.
The particular content of this moral sensibility is not crucial to
the formulation of a Shinran based anarchism as it belongs to the
realm of provisional judgment, to which Shinran refuses to con-
fer any ultimate validity, and could be replaced or reformulated.
However, this interplay of agencies offers a model for trying to
live in the spirit of an ideal world while having to deal with a
dystopian one.
Most importantly, Shinran’s refusal to enter a symbiotic rela-
tionship with the state can trigger a Buddhist anarchist reassess-
ment of the long history of Buddhist cooptation and collaboration
with the state, to which the Jodo Shinshu tradition is no exception.
If Buddhism is not inherently authoritarian, its long history of en-
tanglement with government across the Buddhist world needs to
be acknowledged and critically explored. In order to articulate a
Buddhism that can be anarchist, it is essential to first understand
how Buddhism has not, by and large, been anarchistic. Further,
by exploring oppressive histories many instances of resistance can
be discovered and creatively re-appropriated. Shinran’s historical
awareness and his creative re-engagement of the Buddhist textual
tradition extend an invitation to re-interpret and re-read. Such
re-reading, which is understood as one of the Latin etymologies
of the word religion (re-legere, literally read again), is central to