112 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
- Shinran elaborates on this originally Daoist idea of spontaneity
for explaining the workings of tariki agency in “On Jinen Honi”,
CWS, p. 427–428. In his own words jinen or spontaneity (Chinese,
ziran) means both the “supreme nirvana” (p.428) and the lack of
concern “about being good or bad” (pp. 427–428). Thus, the goal
of Buddhist practice mirrors the means that attain it. Above all jinen
means that entrusting and realization do not happen “through the
practicer’s calculation” but “through the working of the Tathagata’s
vow” (p.427), therefore, “no working is true working” (p. 428). - A Record in Lament of Divergences. Tannisho I. CWS, p. 661.
- Bloom discusses Shinran’s moral approach on the one hand
“not advocat[ing] a repressive ethic emphasizing abstention from
any worldly activity simply because it is worldly” and, on the other,
“suggest[ing] an ethic of displacement in which contemplation of the
Vow and the recitation of Nembutsu infuses an awareness of Amida’s
compassion” which in turn inspires compassionate action. See Bloom,
“Shin Buddhism in the Modern Ethical Context”, in Shindharmanet
(http://shindharmanet.com/course/c24/). - Lamp for the Latter Ages. Mattosho XX. CWS, p. 553.
- A Record in Lament of Divergences. Tannisho IX. CWS, p. 665
- Rambelli, Fabio. “Just Behave as You Like; Prohibitions and
Impurities Are Not a Problem. Radical Amida Cults and Popular
Religiosity in Premodern Japan” in Kenneth Tanaka and Richard
Payne Approaching the Land of Bliss. Religious Praxis in the Cult of
Amitabha. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004, p.176. - In fact, Rambelli presents Shinran simultaneously being consid-
ered by others to be an ichinengi, one of the streams of Pure Land
Buddhism that he labels as “radical Amidism”, but also being “very
critical of this alternative interpretation of Amidist orthodoxy and
orthopraxy” (p. 179) - Amstutz, “Shinran and Authority,” p. 150.
- The idea of mappo is based on some Buddhist sutras that posed
that humanity will progressively degenerate as time elapsed from
the historical Buddha’s disappearance from the world (fifth century
BCE). The most popular Japanese calculations located the beginning
of the last and most degenerate age circa 1050.