Shinran and 'The Sutra of Immeasurable Life': The Buddhist Thinker as Reader
Lecture by Dennis Hirota is professor of Shin Buddhist Studies, emeritus, Ryukoku University, Kyoto
Shinran (Gutoku Shinran 愚禿親鸞, 1173-1263) maintains his status today as one of the most consequential Buddhist thinkers in Japanese history. The tradition stemming from his thought and teaching activity, Shin Buddhism (Jōdo Shinshū 浄土真宗), has been a significant force in Japanese society since the fifteenth century and remains among the largest of its Buddhist institutions at present, with over twenty thousand temples.
Shinran’s significance within the broad historical sweep of Buddhist thought and practice turns on his searching insight into the subtle vestiges of delusive self-attachment that tend to persist even in religious study and discipline, and on his probing exploration of the nature of unenlightened, karmically conditioned human existence in vital engagement with the Buddhist path.
This presentation will consider issues in Shinran’s interpretive practices in relation to the central scripture of East Asian Pure Land Buddhism, outlining his resolution of the fundamental problem in Buddhist traditions of how it may be that ignorant beings are enabled to apprehend the truth of Buddhist texts.
Dennis Hirota is professor of Shin Buddhist Studies, emeritus, Ryukoku University, Kyoto. He was the Head Translator of The Collected Works of Shinran and has published on Japanese Pure Land Buddhist traditions. He is presently completing a book on Shinran’s thought in the light of Heidegger.