106 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
any Buddhist anarchism that aims to religiously re-read the world
and itself. Thus Shinran contributes a thorough and critical mod-
el for re-reading Buddhist history, the Buddhist canon and the
(Buddhist) readers themselves.
Acknowledgement
This research was partially enabled by the research group
Culturas, Religiones y Derechos Humanos (CRDH-GdI-01) at the
International University of La Rioja (Universidad Internacional
de La Rioja-UNIR). The author would like to thank the project
for the generous material and institutional support which contrib-
uted to the completion of this chapter.
Notes
- Perhaps the best example of a Buddhist anarchist who did not
rely (exclusively) on Zen ideas in order to construct his Anarcho-
Buddhism is that of the Chinese monk Taixu (1890–1947). Taixu’s
main Buddhist practice was connected to the millenarian tradition
of Maitreya and it shares many of the devotional aspects of Japanese
Pure Land thinking discussed in this chapter. For a thorough discus-
sion of Taixu’s thought see Justin Ritzinger, Anarchy in the Pure Land:
Tradition, Modernity, and the Reinvention of the Cult of Maitreya in
Republican China (Ann Arbor, Michigan: ProQuest, 2010). - An example of the tendency to consider Gary Snyder the first
Buddhist anarchist can be found in this blog entry by Ian Mayes,
which constitutes one of the more articulate contemporary formu-
lations of Buddhist anarchism in the West: “Envisioning a Buddhist
Anarchism” in The Implicit & Experiential Rantings of a Person
(http://parenthesiseye.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/envisioning-buddhist-
anarchism.html, 2010) - Gary Snyder, “Buddhist Anarchism”, in Bureau of Public Secrets,
(http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/garysnyder.htm, 2002 [1961]). - Ibid.
- An account of Gudo’s work and some of his manuscripts can be
found in Fabio Rambelli. Zen Anarchism. The Egalitarian Dharma of