Shin Ugly Blog

This is the fourth of four posts that I am writing to answer a question posed by a Shin Buddhist dharma friend named Ray.

Ray asks why I think that “Shin Semiotics” - the view of modern Shin Buddhist scholars - that Amida Buddha is symbol and mythos rather than a real person - is such a lamentable diversion, and so harmful to the propagation of Shinran’s teaching. (more…)

This is the third of four posts that I am writing to answer a question posed by a dharma friend named Ray.

Ray asks why I think the view of modern Shin Buddhist scholars - that Amida Buddha is symbol and mythos rather than a real person - is such a lamentable diversion, and so harmful to the propagation of Shinran’s teaching.

These four posts are my answer to his question. This post, in particular is about his use of Karen Armstrong’s teaching about what’s wrong with fundamentalist theology and what’s right with modernist and post-modernist theology - an approach that Ray uses to provide him with tools for understanding Shinran and Shin Buddhism.

I call Ray’s approach - which is also the approach of modern Shin Buddhist scholars and clerics - “Shin Semiotics”.

In a broader context, these posts concerning “Shin Semiotics” offer a basis for an honest discussion around what I call “The Shinran Manifesto”: the call to RETURN TO THE TRUE TEACHING OF SHINRAN, OUR TRUE TEACHER . (more…)

This is the second of four posts that I am writing to answer a question posed by a dharma friend named Ray.

Ray asks why I think the view of modern Shin Buddhist scholars - that Amida Buddha is symbol and mythos rather than a real person - is such a lamentable diversion, and so harmful to the propagation of Shinran’s teaching.

These four posts are my answer to his question. This post, in particular is about my PERSONAL encounter with Shin Semiotics, and its inadequacy in dealing with the suffering in my own life experience. Subsequent posts will be less personal, and more oriented to intellectually understanding of how and why “Shin Semiotics” - including the idea that Amida Buddha is a fictive mythos and symbol - is emphatically NOT the dharma of Shinran’s True Teaching, Practice and Realization of the Pure Land Way.

In a broader context, these posts concerning “Shin Semiotics” offer a basis for an honest discussion around what I call “The Shinran Manifesto”: the call to RETURN TO THE TRUE TEACHING OF SHINRAN, OUR TRUE TEACHER . (more…)

This is the first of four posts that I am writing to answer a question posed by a dharma friend named Ray on the Yahoo! egroup SHINLIST.

Ray asks why I think the view of modern Shin Buddhist scholars - that Amida Buddha is symbol and mythos rather than a real person - is such a lamentable diversion, and so harmful to the propagation of Shinran’s teaching.

This introductory letter, and the three that will follow it, are my answer to his question.

In a broader context, these posts offer a basis for an honest discussion around what I call “The Shinran Manifesto”: the call to RETURN TO THE TRUE TEACHING OF SHINRAN, OUR TRUE TEACHER . (more…)