Boston Shinshu Buddhist Sangha meets once a month.
For the next meeting time
E-mail us 

Contents

• Who are we?

• History of Buddhism

• What is Jodo Shinshu Buddhism?

Newsletter

Buddhist Music

Books on Jodo Shinshu (Shin) Buddhism

Who are we?

Jodo Shinshu teaches salvation and enlightenment through the transferred merit of Amida Buddha's Great Vow. Transferred merit from Buddhas and Bodhisattvas means that, in the process of their enlightenment and service to living beings, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas acquire a kind of good karma that can be given to others as an act of compassion. It's sort of like saving money from doing good honest work and giving it to people in need, but in a less material and more spiritual sense. Anyone on the Budda Path who helps others to find that way and helps them along on it is a bodhisattva. There are great bodhisattvas of exceptional wisdom (almost-buddhas, called "mahasattvas" in Sanskrit), and there are "everyday" bodhisattvas, ordinary people who follow and promote Buddhism as a joyful act. People who isolate themselves from the world to practice Buddhism are not bodhisattvas.

Boston Shinshu is small but has high hopes of growing. The sangha is not formally affiliated with any particular branch of Jodo Shinshu but has a sense of kinship to all practicers of Pure Land Buddhism in particular, and to all Buddhists and beings everywhere. There are two closely similar branches of Shin Buddhism in Japan, Nishi Honganji and Higashi Honganji. Their traditions are slightly different. Nishi Honganji has an outreach program in Hawaii and the continental United States. In Hawaii it is called the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii, and on the mainland it is known as the Buddhist Churches of America. There are several dozen Shin Buddhist temples in the continental US and Hawaii.

Back to Contents

History of Buddhism

The historical Buddha ("enlightened one"), known as Buddha Shakyamuni (born Gotama Siddharta, a prince of the Shakya clan in northern India and lived c. 563-483 BCE), lived the life of a normal human being in the sense that he was born, was mortal, lived, and died. But his life was most unusual in that he addressed issues that no one in recorded human history ever had before. He tackled the seemingly impenetrable subject of - what is suffering?, what is the cause of suffering?, is there a way to end suffering?, and if so, what can be done to eliminate suffering? When he was in his mid-30s, after several years of struggling, searching and contemplating these problems, he finally experienced a great awakening, called "bodhi" or nirvana, and found the answer to these questions, which became known as the "Four Truths" (or "Four Noble Truths"). In this experience, he saw the whole meaning of life unraveled before him and what the purpose of living beings really is about, namely, to be free of suffering in order to evolve to the highest level of being possible.

The first phase of Buddha Shakyamuni's teachings was to demonstrate that his enlightenment, or "bodhi", was real, was not a 'fluke', and could be achieved by others in addition to himself. To accomplish this, he began teaching and exemplifying what he had gone through to attain bodhi. Thus informed by his own experience, he was able to prevent his followers from going down the blind alleys he had found and abandoned by trial and error in his own quest. For instance, through personal experience he discovered that self-denial to the point of starvation was useless as a path to enlightenment, because it only weakened the body and the mind.

So he devised a "middle path", a compromise that allowed people to find release from suffering while living essentially normal human lives. In his sangha, or those several hundred people closest to him, there were certain rules of behavior that later became encoded as the Vinayas, or the monastic disciplines. The theory and purpose behind these disciplines was encoded in the form of the Buddha's oral sermons or "sutras" (suttas), which were memorized over generations and finally written down some 500 years later. In subsequent centuries, others attempted to explain the "Dharma" (teachings of Shakyamuni) in terms more suited to the temper of their times. These later teachings and writings became known as the Abhidharma (or commentaries). These three categories - Vinayas, Sutras, and Abhidharma - represent the Theravada teachings, or the "teachings of/to the elders," i.e., those in the Buddha's circle. The body of writings is huge, and is also referred to as the Tipitaka (three 'baskets' - the Vinayas, the Sutras, and the Commentaries), or the "Pali Canon" (Pali being the language in which it is preserved).

Once Shakyamuni Buddha had formed a sangha that was actually bringing people closer and closer (if not actually all the way in all cases) to full enlightenment, he could start to expound the more ultimate purpose of attaining release from suffering. One might well ask, was it the sole purpose of people following the Buddha to simply extinguish their karma and drift off into neutral stagnant oblivion? The later teachings of Buddha Shakyamuni indicate otherwise. In them a grander purpose is revealed, to open the living beings to the wondrous realm of being enlightened -- or buddhahood. So he turned his teachings to deeper and more awe-inspiring levels as the decades rolled by.

Shakyamuni's last teachings, approximately the last decade of his 80 years, were encoded and later expanded into what are called the Mahayana teachings. In addition, the Buddha foresaw a time when his followers and their followers would die and the teachings would gradually diminish in vitality and penetrating wisdom. So he made preparations for this centuries ahead of that time by teaching the higher Mahayana sutras -- the Threefold Lotus Sutra, the Pure Land Triple Sutra, the Great Nirvana Sutra, and the Flower Garland Sutra. These in various ways introduce the element of faith as the prime factor in enlightenment. This applied particularly to those people living in the later times, when his direct teachings would be so removed in time and diluted through imperfect transmission as to be forgotten or not understood as he taught them.

Back to Contents

What is Jodo Shinshu Buddhism?

• The Sutra on the Buddha of Eternal Life, or simply The Larger Sutra;
• The Sutra of Contemplation on Amida Buddha;
• The Shorter Sutra on Amida Buddha, or simply the Amida Sutra

Pure Land Buddhism grew over a 2,000 year period from the first writing-down of the Theravada and Mahayana sutras. The first person to expound Pure Land Buddhism was Shakyamuni Buddha himself. In the Pure Land Sutras, Shakyamuni preached that, by having total and undivided faith in Amida Buddha, one could attain enlightenment without the need to undergo the strict disciplines of the Vinayas or other practices. Enlightenment would come in the afterlife, where one would be free of the distractions and attachments of living, rather than in the present life. This salvation was open to anyone who so much as thought on Amida Buddha one to ten times in trusting faith. This process of faith, in addition to looking ahead to full enlightenment in Amida Buddha's Pure Land, also assured a positive, transformative influence upon the believer during the remainder of his or her life. We have no idea of knowing how widely this teaching was received in his own time or the years following. The Lotus Sutra indicates that many of his sangha, the "arhats" who had already attained their own breakthrough into enlightenment, were opposed to the grander promises of the Mahayana.  However, in the Larger Pure Land Sutra (The Sutra on the Buddha of Eternal Life), the advanced followers, and all others attending, welcomed and celebrated the expounding of Amida Buddha and salvation through his Vow to save all beings.

Then who is Amida Buddha?  There are thousands of Buddhas who are remembered and revered by name and who have stories attached to them, yet for whom we have no historical trace of ever having lived. This is true, of course, for many of the Buddha Shakyamuni's own followers. Historical verification is not a matter of ultimate significance in Buddhism. What matters is the essence and validity of the doctrine being taught. Amida Buddha is not known to us historically, but is recorded only through these three sutras which speak of him as living in the remotest past. This record is spiritual history as opposed to documentary history (birth certificates, for example).

Amida Buddha began as a king, a man who sought enlightenment under the then living-Buddha of his world, named Buddha Lokesvararaja, likewise known only through the sutras. This king took the Dharma name of Bodhisattva (bodhisattva=person on the brink of buddhahood who brings the Dharma to suffering beings), Dharmakara.

Bodhisattva Dharmakara asked Buddha Lokesvararaja one day to show him all the buddha-lands of the cosmos. When he was granted this request, Bodhisattva Dharmakara became moved to make a most unusual vow, which is detailed in the Larger Pure Land Sutra as Vow number 18. While other Buddhas all vowed to save all beings through various practices, Dharmakara wished to create a special buddha-land (the Pure Land) where any sincere petitioner could be reborn and attain enlightenment without the confusing and conflicting pains and distractions of mortal existence. According to the sutras, Dharmakara vowed that he would not allow himself to be enlightened until this Buddha field and all its powers were thus created. At the time his Buddha land was completed, he became the Buddha, Amida (also known as Amitabha or Amitayus). This is all said to have happened over billions upon billions of years in the past. Taken literally, the sutra suggests that, in theory, Amida Buddha has already saved everyone. The problem is, most people in suffering lives have yet to awaken to this inheritance and claim it. The sole purpose of Jodo Shinshu is to make this inheritance known to people and to aid them in coming to trust it and accept it as real.

Pure Land Buddhism, as first taught by Shakyamuni Buddha, was taken up by the next great Buddhist teacher and philosopher of India, the Bodhisattva Nagarjuna (ca. 2nd century CE). Nagarjuna's life was actually prophesied by Shakyamuni Buddha. Nagarjuna was a long-lived and verbally prolific Buddhist teacher and writer, whose teachings span virtually every aspect of Mahayana Buddhism that developed after him. In one of his teachings he expounded the taking of refuge in various Buddhas in order to access the merits of their buddhahood. However, recognizing that Amida Buddha had taken unusually specific Vows of Buddhahood - namely to save all beings who took refuge in his saving powers - Nagarjuna emphasized taking refuge in the Buddha Amida over other Buddhas, and composed a great hymn to this effect.

Another great Buddhist teacher, who lived in India about 3 centuries after Nagarjuna, was a man named Vasubandhu. He, too, is associated with a number of different schools of Mahayana teaching. However, he picked up where Nagarjuna left off by singling out Amida Buddha as the one proper refuge for wandering and deluded beings - i.e., all of us. A number of other teachers followed. Vasubandhu wrote a concise treatise about Amida's Pure Land and the taking of refuge in Amida Buddha.

When Vasubandhu's teachings were imported into China along with the Buddhist canon, the first person to notice and expound the importance of Vasubandhu's treatise was a 7th-c. Chinese man named T'an-luan (Jp. Donran). A few decades after, another Chinese Buddhist, T'ao-cho (Jp. Doshaku) built on T'an-luan's ideas. The Chinese Dharma teacher Shan-tao (Jp. Zendo) brought Chinese Pure Land thinking to its pinnacle in the 9th c. with his enormous treatise on the Sutra of Meditation on the Buddha Amida.

Buddhism had been introduced to Japan in the 6th century CE, but it was some time before Japanese Buddhists started to notice the Pure Land tradition which was very prevalent in China.  In the 10th century a man named Genshin wrote a huge commentary about Amida Buddha's Pure Land, called The Teachings Essential for Rebirth [in the Pure Land] (Ojoyoshu). This highly popular book was noticed in the later 12th century by a searching individual by the name of Genku (Honen). Genku, after much study and contemplation, came to the conclusion, in his treatise Senchaku Hongan Nembutsu Shu (On the Nembutsu Selected in the Primal Vow) that most people of his time were too removed in time and too lost in delusion to be able to use the Dharma practices successfully to attain enlightenment. From his deep compassion, he thought it unfair that ordinary people should be excluded from enlightenment. So he advocated chanting the name of Amida Buddha: this phrase is called the Nembutsu. In Japanese it is pronounced "Namu Amida Butsu." It means, "I take refuge in Amida Buddha." It also implies, "I am grateful for Amida Buddha's assurance of salvation in his Pure Land." Namu indicates that one recognizes and accepts the Great Vow of Amida Buddha. Hence it is considered part of the Name of Amida Buddha.

One of Honen's most gifted students, Shinran, organized the principles laid down by Honen into what is called the Jodo-Shinshu, meaning the True Pure Land Sect. With scholastic rigor, Shinran clarified many points which Honen had left unsaid for one reason or another. Shinran lived a long life (90 years) and wrote voluminously and forcefully about faith and refuge in Amida Buddha. Shinran was gifted with a poetic creativity and composed hundreds of short hymns, callad wasan, on the Pure Land faith, the lineage, and the problems of living in modern times of confusion. For this reason, his writings - well ahead of his time - are seen today as acutely timely for people living in the trouble modern world. One of Shinran's prose writings, the Kyo Gyo Shin Sho (On the True Practice, Teaching, Faith and Realization of the Pure Land Way), is a lengthy treatise which sums up the entire development of Pure Land Buddhism, only briefly outlined here. In the body of the text is a great poem, Shoshinge (Hymn on Faith-Practice of the Nembutsu). In this lengthy poem, Shinran reverently reviews and extols the development of Pure Land teaching from Shakyamuni through 17 centuries down to his own teacher, Genku (Honen). The Collected Works of Shinran are being put on-line.

Those who felt Shinran was their teacher later organized a sect called Jodo-Shinshu (True Pure Land Sect), in contrast to those who felt closer to the teachings of Honen, who identified with the name Jodo-Shu (Pure Land Sect). There are those who insist that the differences between Shinran and Honen were significant. However, all of Shinran's writings and theories are based upon and explain the teachings of Honen, in the way the Abhidharma once did towards the original teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha. Jodo-Shinshu and Jodo-Shu both continue to thrive today.

In the 15th c. CE, a Japanese man named Rennyo felt that the teachings and following of Shinran had declined, so he reformed the Jodo-Shinshu sect by returning to many of Honen's original teachings and greatly revitalized the institution. Rennyo was musically inclined, and composed chanting music to go with the canonical works, mainly the poems of Shinran. Jodo-Shinshu has remained largely unchanged since the days of Rennyo for about 500 years.

In the late 19th century, Jodo-Shinshu Buddhism was introduced to Hawaii by missionaries from Japan. Since Hawaii has had a sizable Japanese population, Shin Buddhism thrived there, and it became a jumping point for Shin Buddhism to spread to the North American continent including the U.S. and Canada, with larger and more numerous Shin temples in California. In a century, Shin Buddhism has risen to tens of thousands of members in the United States, with temples in the West, the Midwest, East and South. Jodo Shinshu has also been introduced to Latin America (Brazil), Western Europe, and Australia in recent decades.

Back to Contents

Newsletter

Back to Contents

Buddhist Music

• "Songs of the Pure Land," for Soprano and Piano accompaniment, using 8 poems of Honen Shonin as lyrics (translated into English in the 19th c.). This set of songs lasts about 10 minutes and was premiered by the noted Soprano, Jane Struss, at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass., on Dec. 15, 1997.

 

 

• "The Lamentations of Shinran" for Soprano, Tenor, and String Quartet accompaniment (in Japanese). This set of 16 wasans (Japanese Buddhist poems) by Shinran Shonin uses the portion of his Shozomatsu Wasan (or "Poems on the Age of Declining Dharma") called the "Confession and Lamentation of Gutoku [Shinran]." The music, about half-an-hour in length, was premiered by the Janus Ensemble during its Summer Series at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass., with Jane Struss, Soprano, and Michael Calmes, Tenor.

The purpose of this chanting edition is to use the traditional Japanese style of chanting using English instead of Japanese. With this edition it will be possible for people to chant simultaneously in Japanese and English. It will be published in the form of "sheet music", the English version above and the Japanese version (complete with Romanji text) beneath. Publication is anticipated late in 1998 or 1999.

Back to Contents

Books on Jodo Shinshu (Shin) Buddhism

A number of very well-written books in English have appeared in the past few years which give a modern-day view of the deeper meaning of Shin Buddhism. This is not a complete listing, just a few to get people started. '

River of Fire, River of Water, by Taitetsu Unno (Doubleday Press, 1998, price paperback $12, available for $9.60+shipping from Amazon Books on-line).

Shin Buddhism: Bits of Rubble Turn Into Gold, by Taitetsu Unno (Doubleday Press, 2002, price paperback $12.95, available for $10.36+shipping from Amazon Books on-line).

Buddha of Infinite Light, by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (Shambala publications, 1998, hardcover price $17, no paperback, available for about $12+shipping from Amazon Books on-line).

The Natural Way of Shin Buddhism, by Shoji Matsumoto and Ruth Tabrah ( Buddhist Study Center Press, Honolulu,  $10 (for sale at the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii bookstore, 1747 Pali Highway, Honolulu, HI 96813, tel. 808-522-9200).

The Monk Who Dared, A Novel about Shinran, by Ruth Tabrah. Paperback, $15 plus shipping. For sale at the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii bookstore (telephone orders honored), 1747 Pali Highway, Honolulu, HI 96813, tel. 808-522-9200.

The Monk's Wife, A Novel about Eshinni, Shinran's Wife by Ruth Tabrah. Paperback, $15 plus shipping. For sale at the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii bookstore (telephone orders honored), 1747 Pali Highway, Honolulu, HI 96813, tel. 808-522-9200.

Tannisho: A Shin Buddhist Classic, sayings of Shinran as memorialized by his pupil Yuienbo, translated, edited and with explanatory notes by Taitetsu Unno (revised edition, 1996). Paperback, $12.95 plus shipping. For sale at the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii bookstore (telephone orders honored), 1747 Pali Highway, Honolulu, HI 96813, tel. 808-522-9200.

Strategies for Modern Living; A Commentary with the Text of the Tannisho, by Alfred Bloom (Heian International Inc., 1993: Paperback $10+shipping from Amazon Books on-line).

The Land of Bliss : The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light : Sanskrit and Chinese Versions of the Sukhavativyuha Sutras, translated by Luis O. Gomez (Editor) (University of Hawaii Press: 1996, paperback about $14+shipping from Amazon Books on-line).

Back to Contents

Shin Buddhism website, for further in-depth information, sutras, and links on Pure Land Buddhism.