886 elizabeth ten grotenhuis
the union of believer and Amida, which made birth in the Pure Land
an immediate experience. The most prominent heirs of Shōkū’s teach-
ings, however, were priests of the Shin sect who appropriated Seizan
terminology and doctrines.
Shinran, Hōnen’s best-known disciple, believed that because human-
kind suffered under such a burden of accumulated evil deeds, peo-
ple were incapable of building up sufficient merit to attain salvation
through their own efforts. While Hōnen held that Amida’s compas-
sion extended to include evil as well as good persons, Shinran gained
the insight that Amida had made his vows for the express purpose
of saving all people without any moral distinction whatsoever. Sal-
vation cannot be generated by human beings: it is solely the gift of
Amida. Human beings do not choose Amida. Rather, Amida chooses
human beings through his primal vow and they are assured of salva-
tion when they accept Amida’s gift of faith. Recitation of the nenbutsu,
rather than constituting a meritorious act that leads to birth in the
Pure Land, becomes an expression of gratitude to Amida for the gift
of faith that assures that very birth.
Human hair was worked into esoteric images from about the same
time as the proliferation of Pure Land embroideries that incorporated
human hair. One example is the dramatic early-fourteenth-century
Mandala of the Two Worlds (Ryōgai Mandara ) from
Taisanji in Kobe, representing the entirety of the Buddhist cosmos
(figure 2).
This devotional embroidery, showing the Diamond World above
the Womb World, is a Siddham seed-syllable (shuji ) mandala in
which the sacred syllables signifying deities were worked with human
hair. The Diamond World Mandala represents reality in the buddha-
realm, the world of the unconditioned, the universal, the absolute. The
Womb World Mandala represents reality as it is revealed in the world
of the conditioned, the individual, the particular, and the relative. Such
an object raises the perplexing question: why has the quintessential
mandala of the esoteric tradition, focused on the primordial Bud-
dha Dainichi (Mahāvairocana), incorporated human hair, when
human hair embroideries are associated with the Pure Land tradition
focused on Amida? We must examine this issue historically in the
context of nenbutsu thought.
By the twelfth century, belief in birth in Amida’s Pure Land through
recitation of the nenbutsu was spreading rapidly throughout society,
and thinkers associated with traditional schools of Buddhism had to