History of Pure Land Buddhism

English translation of the French language text “History of Pure Land Buddhism”

Eldest son of a noble family related to the Fujivara, Shinran Shonin, who was first of all called Zenshin, then Shakku, was born in Kyoto in 1173. The details of his biography, on the admission even of Shin-Shu historians, have little certainty. ^¹ It is possible particularly that they have been systematically presented in a way to make better understood Shinran’s personal intimacy with Honen and his close fidelity to his Master. However, let us accept the tradition as it is given to us.

Very soon become an orphan, Shinran at the age of eight entered a monastery on Mount Hiei, where he received, like Tyonin and Honen, the Tendai teaching. At the age of twenty-eight, he had a miraculous dream: Kwannon revealed himself and referred him to Honen. The latter’s preaching then converted him to strict Amidism. That was in 1201. Two years later, at the invitation of his new Master, he left the monastery to marry. (He is said to have married the daughter of Prince Kujo Kanezane, Prime Minister at that time; perhaps he subsequently contracted a second marriage.) But he nonetheless continued to practise and preach the nembutsu with him. In 1207, he suffered exile like him; retired to the northern province of Echigo, he profited by this to preach Amida to the people of the countryside.

Accentuating the practical, popular and universal character of the Jodo teaching, Shinran explained that it is not indispensable, in order to enter on the way of liberation, to leave one’s family and renounce all the desires of this world. He extolled therefore the carrying out of social tasks and rejected every extraordinary practice, all superstitious attachment to formulas, all ritualism of the monastic life had no special value in his eyes. This was being faithful to the spirit of Honen, who had approved, although without following them himself, the first innovations of his disciple. But it was to push further than he, and in a sense that he had not entirely foreseen, the consequences of his doctrine. It was, if you like, “to finish off” his work. It has even been possible to say that it was to bring to its final conclusion an idea which went back to Prince Shotoku and which since then had always obscurely guided Japanese Buddhism: the idea that there is no path which to attain illumination than that of deeds and ordinary daily life. ^² It was to humanise religion and to laicize it, so to speak, in a manner which was perhaps in conformity with one of the tendencies always at work in the depths of the Great Vehicle, and previously even, before its formation, in the Mahasamghika, even, in conformity with certain features of the ideal lived out in previous times by Sakyamuni ^³ - but which was nonetheless bound to appear subversive of it. Indeed, we must acknowledge it: this manner was in contradiction to what had been up until then the Buddhism of all times and all countries. Doubtless the Great Vehicle, with its distinction between essential obligations (dharmata) and conventional obligations (sankrta), appeared less than the other (Vehicle) as a religion of Monks. It was labouring under a spirit which drove it perhaps to break, as has been said, its monastic shell. It represented the Bodhisattvas, in whom it hypostasized its ideal, not as Monks, but as Princes. The hero of one of its principal Sutras was a layman, the philosopher Vimalakirti. Nevertheless, no more than the doctors of the Little Vehicle, would its doctors admit that it was possible, all things considered, to have “right view”, and as a result “suppression of suffering” outside the knowledge and destruction of “craving”. ^⁴ They all thought likewise that the passions (klesas), as long as they are not uprooted, perpetuate the fatal cycle, like a cut-down tree whose root is intact. If not all would have ratified the radicalism of a Milarepa comparing love of one’s family to “a fortress of demons”, all thought that this love was to be at last transcended. ^⁵ They most certainly did not have the idea that this could depend, as certain people explain today, on the political and economic conditions of an epoch. And one would have indeed astonished the ancient disciples of Sakyamuni, even those most indulgent to the weaknesses of this world, by telling them that a day would come when a whole school would teach in his name that there was no point in caring about drying up at their source “the desires which revolve in the hearts of those who are ignorant”. ^⁶

No more than Honen, is Shinran a great writer. He has however left quite numerous works: letters, occasional writings, liturgical poems, doctrinal works. Among these last, several, intended for the people, are written in Japanese language and in a very adapted style. “Refined people”, he wrote, “will find this strange and doubtless will laugh at me; but I do not care about their jests; for my sole aim is to make myself clearly understood by simple people.” Other writings are learned Treatises, written, according to current usage, in Chinese. The most important is the Kyo-Gyo-Shine Sho, or “Teaching, Practice, Faith, Attainment”. Shinran published it in 1224, shortly after his return to Kyoto. It is a work in six volumes, collecting together and commenting on one hundred and forty-three canonical or traditional texts. ^⁷ Sharing in this with the liturgical poems, it is venerated by the sect on an equality with the sacred books. ^⁸

Shinran condensed his whole message in it. “I have abandoned”, he declared, “the 1201 kinds of practice, in order to trust totally to the original Vow of Amida. Then he endeavoured to reconcile the opposite sides, by recalling them to essentials, that is to the inward. The world, he said, is an ocean of affliction. To cross over it and flee it, we must go on board “the boat of love guided by Amid”. But what does it matter whether the invocations we address to him are great or few in number? Indeed, only one is really necessary. What matters is that invocation should be made at the moment when trust in Amida is expanding in the soul. It is then that it is salutary, because it is then that it has its full sincerity. ^⁹

Afterwards it will be good to renew it, “not to obtain salvation, but to give thanks for having obtained it”; and then, without allowing oneself henceforth to be troubled by anything, let one simply follow his calling in life, as an honest man and good citizen. For good works are the signs of salvation obtained as of the gratitude of the believer. ^¹0

Shinran therefore refused to take part in a controversy which appeared to him to stem on one side and the other from a false perspective. While the right wing of the official successors of Honen took the statements of the Sutras as literally as possible, he sought the essential intention which was hidden under the details of the text. He brought souls back to a simpler and more spiritual view. For him, as for Honen and as previously for Chan-t’ao, it was neither the duration nor the number of “thoughts of the Buddha” which it was a question of regulating: it was the conversion of the

heart to the teaching of the Pure Land, or rather to its Buddha, which it was a matter of bringing about. ^¹1

Such an attitude was not revolutionary, as was the disregard of all monastic life. Such an attitude was not only in conformity with that of the best Amidism: it was so with that of the best Buddhism of every school, at every time. It was the Fa-kin king, a Chinese adaptation of the Dhammapada, made by Vighna in the third century, which declared: “Salvation does not lie in the multiplicity of the texts recited or of the offerings made. To recite a thousand stanzas no one can understand is nothing. To recite a single stanza one appreciates is much. To assimilate a truth, then to act as a result of it, this it is which leads to salvation.” Nevertheless, Shinran was free from gleaning all the approbation in the posterity of Honen. Instead of restoring unity, he succeeded at first only in adding more dissension. He was declared a heretic. When he wished to walk in the wake of the moderate Zennebo, he was treated as the intemperate Kosai had been a little earlier. It even seems that, the better to discredit him, certain persons represented him as a disciple of this last.^¹2 He was hunted out of the Jodo-Shu.

However, in his old age, he was to have a moral revenge. In fact, Ryukwan the zealot, who had militated ardently in favour of “multiple thoughts” to the point of concluding that it was necessary to accumulate them ceaselessly throughout one’s whole life, published in 1255 an opuscule in which he put forward an explanation of his thesis tantamount to a disavowal. “The dispute over the single thought and multiple thoughts”, he said, “is still making a great stir at the present time. It is a serious matter whose examination requires the greatest caution. To detest multiple thoughts while extolling the single thought, or on the contrary to cry down the single thought while advocating multiple thoughts, is, on either side, to run counter to the fundamental Vow. It is to forget the teachings of Zendo (Chan-t’ao). Well understood, the multiple thoughts are in reality only an accumulation of single thoughts. We must assimilate them as long as we live, but each one must nonetheless be expressed with the idea that it is sufficient. Indeed, each day of his life, a man must think that this day is perhaps his last; every hour he must think that this present hour is perhaps the hour of his death.” ^¹3 Shinran was so satisfied with this explanation, that he copied out Ryukwan’s opuscule with his own hand. Two years later, at the age of eighty-five, he composed a commentary on it, in which he insisted again on the necessity of rising above these unfortunate disputes. ^¹4

He had nonetheless become, despite himself, like Honen, founder of a new sect. It was the Jodo-Shin-Shu or “True Sect of the Pure Land”, further called Monto-Shu, “Sect of those who follow the Teaching” or, a doubly expressive name which it has been sometimes interpreted, “who conceive only One”. When he died peacefully, in 1262, at the age of ninety,^¹5 the sect already gathered together numerous adherents. Soon celibacy was positively disapproved in it, the monastic observances were regarded not only as useless, but contrary to a total faith in the mercy of Amida. ^¹6 The charge of Temples was from then on transmitted from father to son. The posterity of Shinran - he had had six children - formed a kind of hereditary pontificate, governing the Jodo-Shin-Shu from its residence of the Honganji, or “Temple of the original Vow” in Kyoto. This was mainly the work of one of his grandsons, Kakungo (1270 - 1351) and the latter’s son, Zonkaku (1290 - 1373). ^¹7

After the fashion of the Tendai organisation and that of the Hokke of Nichiren, the Shin in this way became rapidly a political, even martial force. In the fifteenth Century, the Honganji was a veritable fortress, a double of the powerful castle of Osaka, to the south of the capital, facing the opposing Tendai positions. Here again the warlike temperament of Japan did its work. “We are shown a pugnacious Buddhism, with organisations a little reminiscent of our military Orders of the Holy Land or of the Baltic. A transformation all the more striking because it occurred in the most pietist . . . of the religious fraternities.” ^¹8 It was completed by Kenju (Kane-naga) (1415 - 1499), become famous under his posthumous name of Rennyo Shonin. He was besides, contrary to the first members of the Shin-Shu, a determined partisan of Ryobu-Shinto,^¹9

and the carrying out of social tasks, as Shinran had preached it, appeared to him to be exactly defined by the morality of Confucius. In fact, the chief intention of Rennyo Shonin was to restore to Amidist devotion the vigour and simplicity which distinguished it in the time of Shinran. But the first success of his reform, in winning the enthusiastic adhesion of a part of the people again awoke jealousies. The Monks of the Hieizan, who in the meantime had attacked Zen, cried out this time again against heresy. It is hardly exaggerated (an exaggeration) to say, with Father Mainage,^²0 that their animosity had “nothing to do with differences of doctrine”, but it was nonetheless furious. They ended by using main force against the Honganji, which was plundered and burnt in 1465. Long struggles ensued, simultaneously against the Tendai and feudal Lords who supported it. Rennyo led them, like his reform with triumphant success. He gathered together his faithful followers in a bond so strong that they could have received the surname of Ikko, “a single soul”. It has been possible to call him the “eight Patriarch” and the second founder of the Shin. ^²1

However, it was not these human and secular tendencies, destined to expand so vigorously after him, which, at least directly, had led Honen’s traditionalist disciples to condemn Shinran. It was, as we have seen, his exact position relatively to the nembutsu. Now the differences which existed between him and his adversaries were subtle. To our eyes, distant and little involved, they run the risk of appearing amiss, all the more so since the most extreme positions sometimes seem to suddenly fall back and change into their opposites. We must therefore make an effort to see things a bit closer, by entering into at least some of Shinran’s categories and using distinctions which he has proposed himself.

Very far from wishing to make a schism and to begin everything anew, Shinran was fond of making use of the names of seven great authorities: Nagarjuna (Ryuju)^²2 and Vasubandhu (Ten-jen) in India, T’an-luan (Don-ran), Tao-tch’ao (Do-shaku) and Chan-t’ao (Zendo) in China, Genshin and Genku (Honen) in Japan. They are the seven Patriarchs of the Shin-Shu. It was to them that Shinran appealed, not to his own experience. “As far as I am concerned”, he said, “the sole reason why I recite the nembutsu is that my good Master (Honen) taught it to me, as the only condition of salvation.” “In myself”, he added with his bent for paradoxical insistence, “I am completely ignorant of whether the nembutsu really brings about rebirth in the Pure Land, or whether it does not lead rather to Hell.” Within Buddhism, he distinguished four systems, combined in “two pairs”, each of which he designated by a picturesque term: “going lengthways” (shu-shutsu), “jumping lengthways” (shu-cho), “going crosswise” (o-shutsu), “jumping crosswise” (o-cho). In the first system, he explained, you wait for illumination from a long and persevering practice, carried on over a whole series of kalpas in successive existences, and with a regular ascent across the spaced-out (graduated) “Bhumis”. In the second, you hope to arrive at gaining consciousness of Buddhahood in ecstasy, and thus to attain illumination in this present existence, without having to travel one by one through the entire series of “Bhumis”. In the third, you hope to obtain rebirth immediately in a more favourable region, where you will be put on the way of illumination; but this region is still a place of transition and effort, and the imperfection of rebirth in such a place stems from a want of trust. In the fourth system, finally, you hope, in an emotion of absolute trust, to be reborn in the True Pure Land of Amida, in accordance with his Vow. This fourth system is the only “true” one. It is taught in the three fundamental Sutras of Amidism, which are recognised by the Shin-Shu as its three principal sacred books; the most important is the “Long Sutra”, because it is there that we find the most explicit mention of the Vow of Amida.

The position of the Jodo can be recognised in the third system. However, it was not directly to oppose it that the new sect took the name of “true sect”, Shin-Shu. This appellation wants moreover to oppose truth less to error than to views judged superficial and “temporary expedients”. Among those who believe in the Pure Land, in fact, some say that we must practise good works and acquire a stock of merits in order to obtain rebirth there; others judge that such maturation is not necessary and that it is enough to repeat Amida’s name. Both forget the main thing. All power is condensed in the original Vow. It is necessary to trust in it with all one’s heart while rejecting all idea of jiriki (“self power”). The external mode of life and the manner of practising the nembutsu can be varied without harm, provided that is safe. such is the true doctrine, professed by the True Sect. Up to here, nothing appears to differentiate it essentially from the Jodo Sect. Only Shinran adds that he who is in conformity with it attains in the nembutsu the supreme Truth, paramarthasatya. He “participates through it in the knowledge of the Amida and shares his compassion, as the water of a river becomes salt as soon as it enters the ocean.” That is why it is said that at his death he will be reborn in the Pure Land. The latter, furthermore, does not constitute a simple stage, not even the last stage towards Buddhahood: “the True Pure Land” is in reality Buddhahood itself, and Amida does not wait for our death to come to encompass us with his presence. Here Shinran appears close to Kosai. Here again is betrayed the contrast of the Jodo-Shin, more venturesome, to the Jodo, more moderate. ^²3 This contrast has been stressed by giving the two sects the respective cognomens of “gradual” and “abrupt”. ^²4 It reproduces in the Amidist context a contrast which was already stated in the Lankavatara and which divided for centuries the adherents of the Dhyana into two schools; gradual and sudden, or again horizontal, “plane”, and vertical, “section”. ^²5

Under other names and in other contexts, these two types of mysticism meet each other everywhere face to face. ^²6 To revert to Shinran’s vocabulary, the Amidists of the Jodo practise the “going crosswise”, but those of the Jodo-Shin, more expeditious still, practise the “jump crosswise”.

Modern representatives of the Jodo-Shin-Shu continue to insist on the feeling of absolute trust which constitutes, from the practical point of view, the essential element of their sect. They continue to press to the limit the opposition of tariki and jiriki. Witness this page by Kojun Shichiri (+ 1900):

“Even when you have understood that the nembutsu is the only way of salvation, often you still hesitate, reflecting within yourself: am I quite all right now? Isn’t there still something to do? That is not at all good. Better to immerse yourself fully in the thought that your karma is not destining you to any other condition than “naraka” (hell). When you are well persuaded of this, nothing remains then but to rush forward and grasp the helping hand that Amida holds out to you. You can be assured of your rebirth in his Pure Land. Do not hamper yourself with qualms by looking for the way of getting into Amida’s good graces, or in asking yourself if you will really be embraced by him. These qualms arise from your not having yet abandoned all thought of reliance on yourself. Entrust yourself to Amida’s grace and let him do what he has chosen for you. Whether you will be saved after or before the moment when you feel yourself purified of all your sins, is not your affair but Amida’s.” ^²7

With more striking brevity, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki says the same thing again: “When the individual is deeply convinced that his moral depravity condemns him finally to naraka, then is the moment for him to call Amida, and the nembutsu is the natural consequence of this painful awakening.” ^²8

Do not these declarations faithfully reproduce the thought which Shinran expressed when he said in energetic terms: “It is usually said that the wicked can be reborn in Paradise, and with stronger reason the good. That is to reverse the terms, for want of understanding the power of the original Vow. We must say on the contrary: If the good can be born in Paradise, with how much stronger reason the wicked.” Such is the doctrine if not of the akki, that is, “of evil as the mainspring (of salvation)”, at least of the akunin-shoki, or “of the wicked as true mainsprings (of the Vow of Amida).” ^²9 And such is, at least in practice, the last word of the Shin-Shu. This last word does not separate it from the Jodo, for Honen himself had said: “The best and highest Law is enunciated for the worst and most worthless of men.” ^³0 A less paradoxical formula, perhaps, than Shinran’s, and in a tone one would dare to call more evangelical. Does it not make one think of the words of Jesus: “It is not those in good health who need the doctor, but the sick”, and “I am not come to save the righteous, but sinners” ? ^³1 Perhaps however the akunin-shoki constitutes in theory only the last word but one of Amidism. With the very last word still be common to the Shin and Jodo? And shall we be able besides still to perceive it as an approach to the mystery of redemption? It is what we shall examine later on.

One perceives, in any case, at least in Shinran an inclination to quietism, so much the more remarkable since, in other respects, he was the inaugurator of a sect activist beyond all others. The true devotee of Amida, he explained, accepts everything from him - even going to naraka.^³2 It is not astonishing, although the accusation may be unjust in the two cases, that he has been charged like Honen with preaching immoralism. A scene reported by Yui-embo throws a great deal of light on this tendency. It conveys at the same time an impression of sincerity and humanity which takes it out of its distant context and causes each person to see himself in it. Yui-embo speaks first:

“One day I asked the Master: “How is it, when I recite the nembutsu, that a feeling of extreme joy does not lift up my heart, and that I do not feel the desire to hurry to the Pure Land?”

“The Master replied: “I, Shinran, have put the same question to myself. O Yui-embo, you too have now asked about it! You are worried about it. But if you will consider the matter carefully, you will feel quite reassured. Why? Just because you do not have this feeling of joy which ought to plunge you into a perfect ecstasy. That is the fruit of the passions. They prevent us from being joyous. But the Buddha knows this fact. He knows that we are all, we other common mortals, filled with passions. We must understand that his merciful Vow, and his “Other Power” which is his, has to do precisely with such poor creatures as ourselves: then we can have an entire assurance of our salvation.

“No, we do not desire to hurry to the Pure Land. Quite on the contrary, we are overcome by deep depression, even if we are not conscious of serious faults, at the thought of our approaching death. Our passions are so grimly powerful that we feel a spontaneous horror at the thought of leaving this old abode of toil and suffering, in which was have transmigrated from immemorial time up to this day, while we have not the least longing for the Happy Land into which we have never yet been born! It is nonetheless necessary for us, following the law of our karma, to leave without having any support this earth, whatever our repugnance, in order to go and be reborn elsewhere.

“Now Amida feels special compassion for those who do not wish to hasten away. If you consider all this, you must feel more certain than ever of the merciful Great Vow, and finally established in the faith that you will be reborn in the Pure Land.” ^³3

“You too, Yui-embo, have now asked about it!” There is in this cry, so spontaneous, so sincere, in this joyous astonishment at the discovery of a shared misery, something deeply moving. In this old Buddhist Master, long persuaded that fundamentally all is suffering (affliction), “like an illness, like an ulcer, like an arrow driven into the body, like a torment”^³4,

this cry testifies to a persistent love of live, of the miserable present life, such as we would expect rather to find in a Greek or Jew - such as is found in every man. Another spiritual Master will one day perceive in himself this “terrible fondness for sensible goods”, even while fighting it in the souls being opened to him, and it will be in vain to see himself spontaneously “as an image in a dream”; he will nonetheless experience to the end the same difficulty in “detaching himself from life” . . . ^³5 We do not want to suggest that Fenelon’s spiritual teaching resembles that of Shinran, nor his lived spirituality; but the very immensity of the distance between them only goes to make us appreciate more in both the same basic humanity.

From an enquiry which abases him as it makes his novice uneasy, Shinran nevertheless immediately draws a reassuring conclusion, in his character as informed spiritual Master as well as trusting devotee. As is his practice, he paradoxically turns the situation inside out, and his faith triumphs over appearances. Then, not content with having proved to his inter-locutor that Amida has especial compassion for him, he insists, applying himself to the contrary supposition: if, on thinking of the Pure Land, one felt transported with fervour, then would be the time to feel afraid; not in thinking that this fervour is perhaps illusory and only “sublimates” some passion or other: that is not at all subtle enough; but because in fact one could then reasonably suspect that the earthly passions are extinct; how could one from that moment count on a salvation, which depends on taking refuge in Amida’s compassion? Such a view only transposes, from the system of “self power” into that of the “Other Power”, a doctrine avowed by the former generations: “He who, being impure, acknowledges that he is impure, such a one makes an effort to become purified, and he dies with a pure mind; he who, being pure, recognises that he is pure and delights in his own purity, such a one is defiled and dies with an impure mind.” ^³6

We do not need to believe, on the other hand, that such sentiments, in which anguish and desire, despair and renunciation are mingled, or confront or change into one another, generally turn into morbid egoism, and that an obsession with one’s own salvation does away with the thought of others. Besides the external service imposed on each person by his social situation or professional task, Shinran preaches goodwill, in entirely Buddhist terms. He wants to put it at the heart of the nembutsu, and he shows in the nembutsu its most efficacious practice. Following the way of Shodo, he says, we must, out of compassion and tenderness of heart, go to the help of others; but there is nothing more difficult in this world, than to put the charitable thought into effect while extending it as far in practice as the desire of the benevolent heart goes. In the way of Jodo, by the power of the nembutsu, we apply without difficulty all the merits that we wish to all beings, with the great compassion experienced by him who attains Buddhahood. Whatever the tenderness we feel for others, it is not possible in this life to help them to the extent of our desire: this kind of goodwill therefore always fails in its object. Only he who says the nembutsu is capable, through the nembutsu, of realising the desire of the most compassionate and merciful heart. ^³7

Shinran’s piety was moreover the same as that of the great Amidists, his predecessors. It was like that of T’an-luan, Chan-t’ao, Genshin or Honen. Only more exclusive and spiritualised - one is tempted to say: more reduced to essentials, or even, in certain aspects, more rationalised - than that of many of the men of old. Not only did he forbid all recourse to charms or other magical proceedings, but he condemned all curiosity in respect of the marvellous, as well as all prayers with a view to worldly goods. No more than Honen did he banish all ceremony; in the Shin as well as in the Jodo, for example, will be perpetuated the ceremony of “the scattering of flowers” (sange), which, customary in many sects, found its justification in a few words from the Sukhavativyuha ^³8 and for which Fa-tchao had composed a psalmody. However, Shinran wanted only a quiet cult and an imagery reduced to the minimum. ^³9 He called Amida “he who has neither colour nor form”. ^⁴0 “We others”, he said, “regard his painted picture as more appropriate to our end than his statue of wood or stone; the sole written name of the Buddha is yet preferable to this painting; but what surpasses all that is faith in the Buddha; it is more excellent than the inscribing of his name.” ^⁴1 There is no question, in any case, in his sect, of tolerating the adoration of Kamis; nor even of venerating any Buddha other than Amida. The Temples will have no other image than his own. While Honen, seeing this image in the little Temple of the village where he was exiled, hastened to join to it those of Kwannon and Seishi, the Shin-Shu withdraws from Amida even his two acolytes, so that devotion does not risk straying to them; it is this which gives him a more monotheistic appearance than in any other sect. Sakyamuni himself will never be represented nor, except for a few rare exceptions, invoked; he will be mentioned in the books only as a herald of Amida. ^⁴2 This piety so concentrated is expressed in the religious poems left by Shinran; the Shoshinge and the Wasan.

The Shoshinge is a long poem in Chinese, which sings the history of the Amidist faith and celebrates its seven Patriarchs. It is still recited in the Shin services. From this “Psalm of the orthodox faith”, let us take these few stanzas:

The Wasan, or “Hymns” of the Pure Land, are also still in use; they are most popular of all. ^⁴5 Fine poetry is not found in them. But their didactic intention, as marked as that of the Shoshinge, does not always run counter to the expression of deep sentiment:

But the same sentiments of piety did not prevent the fatality of divergences always being reborn in the doctrinal explanation. And nothing either could prevent the need for explanation from engendering systems. There resulted the evil of which many Buddhists had already complained: “the appearance of concurrent schools, and the disorder of the heterodoxies, entangled like silken threads”. ^⁴7 Soon a disciple of Shinran, who have been his confidant, Yui-embo, with whom we have already made acquaintance, wrote in his turn, at the threshold of a new work, the Tannisho:

“When my mind turns to the ways of understanding and professing our faith which several of those who claim to follow it have invented in our time, I cannot do other than deplore them: so far are they from the true faith handed on by our last Master. I am alarmed at the thought that those who will come after us will be able thus to be led astray from the right path. How will they find the gate which gives access to the “easy way”? How are they not to confuse the teaching of Tariki with the opinions and interpretations which will be put before them?”

This was why Yui-embo undertook to record in writing, in this little book, some of the sayings which had had gleaned from Shinran, and which remained fixed, living, in his memory. “My sole aim”, he added, “is to disperse in this way the doubts which trouble certain members of our communion on the subject of our faith.” ^⁴8 But it was in vain that he devoted himself afterwards to a whole series of refutations: he no more succeeded in it than Shinran himself in former days; no more than Honen in his last days; no more than in former times the Patriarch Nagarjuna, who wrote a whole Treatise “in order to avoid vain discussions”. ^⁴9 The Japanese propensity to multiplied distinctions assisting, the Jodo-Shin-Shu soon subdivided into several branches, while a new schism, still in the same century, broke out in the Jodo. It was the Ippen schism.

Ippen too (1239 - 1289) had been a Tendai Monk, before passing over to the Jodo. One day - in 1275 - he heard an oracle say to him: “The six mystical characters of the nembutsu (Na-mu-a-mi-da-butsu) represent the absolute universal Law, which contains all things, human and material. The man who comes to realise this is, now at last, the most excellent of men.” His heart began to beat with joy. He preached everywhere what he had heard, which earned for him the nickname of “pilgrim priest”, a name which stuck to the Monks of his sect. He began to distribute tickets, on which were written the six characters with eight other symbolic letters, and which gave an assurance to their holders of rebirth in Paradise. In the Nô Yugyo Yanaji, a Monk will appear saying: “I am a sage who goes around in all the provinces; having received the teachings of the Reverend Ippen, I extend to more than sixty provinces the benefit of their propagation and to all the tickets of certain rebirth in the Paradise of six hundred thousand people.” ^⁵0 In order the better to spread his message, in fact, Ippen founded a new association. This was the sect of the Rokuji-Ojo-shu, or in short, Ji-Shu, that is, “the Sect of Rebirth in Amida’s Paradise by the prayer repeated six times a day”, a title which designates it by a simple external peculiarity: the daily recitation in its services, at six different times, of Zendo’s hymns. ^⁵1

For Ippen as for Honen and Shinran, Amida was the unique object of worship. Only, instead of basing himself at least in part on the teaching of the sacred books and traditional Patriarchs, he appealed directly to Amida himself, through the heard oracle. Now this oracle was none other than the Shintoist divinity Kasuga myojin, worshipped in one of the Temples of Kumano (Kii). We discern here, once more, the spirit of the Ryobu-Shinto, the system of which Ippen takes to extremes. In the Nô Seiganji, composed in the fifteenth Century by one of his disciples, this spirit is clearly expressed:

We also perceive in Ippen’s intuitionism a Zen influence, which was then in Japan in all the strength of its new youth. In the collection of his Sayings, it is said:

“All things belong to a single spirit, but this spirit cannot be manifested by itself. The eye cannot see itself; wood cannot burn itself, although it is combustible by nature. But hold a mirror in front of you, and the eye will see itself: such is the property of the mirror. The mirror possessed by each one of us, and which is called Great Mirror of Illumination, is the Name realised by the Buddhas. Therefore contemplate your original features in the Great Mirror . . . Likewise, the wood will be burnt when it has been kindled by the fire. The fire which burns is identical with the fire which is latent in the wood. Although we are all endowed with the Buddha nature, this will not consume by itself the passions in us as long as it is not kindled by the fire of transcendent wisdom which is inherent in the sacred Name.” ^⁵3

The famous Zen Monk Hoto Kokushi (1207 - 1298) had a conversation with the founder of the Ji in the course of which the latter declared: “When I invoke the sacred Name, there is no longer either the Buddha or I, but purely the invocation”. He then admired such an advance by this Amidist in the mysteries of Zen. ^⁵4

Within the Shin-shu, renowned personalities were not lacking. The pious memory is still preserved of Ryogen (1295 - 1336), who founded the Bukkoji (Temple of the Light of Buddha) in Kyoto. His sermons had such a great success that they threw the directors of the other sects into a panic; furious, some of them laid an ambush for him in the course of one of his preaching tours; at the moment of perishing he said to his assassin: “May you repent your offence and receive Amida’s salvation!” ^⁵5 We have already seen the role played in the following century by Rennyo Shonin. This energetic leader did not disdain the writer’s mode of action. His grandson Ennyo united under the name of Gobunsho a series of open letters which he had written on various occasions, between 1471 and 1499, on various subjects of doctrine and discipline. The mystical sap is not very vigorous in them. Through his concern with spirituality Rennyo nevertheless shows himself the worthy heir of Shinran:

“It is not the simple fact of chanting the Name, without any understanding, which obtains Amida’s help . Here is how the Sutra puts it: “to hear the Name, and believe with joy”. This hearing of the Name is not the hearing of the name composed of six characters, without any more reason or reality . . . But let us suppose a man who enters into contact with goodness and wisdom, who receives their suggestions, and who, saying: “Namu Amida Buddha”, places his trust in the Name: then, without any doubt, Amida will give him his help. Such is the condition which the Sutra had a mind to express by these words: “believing with joy”.

On the relation between the single invocation, which must be affirmed sufficient, and the multiple invocations, which it is fitting to make out of gratitude as well as to fight against intolerance, the Gobunsho likewise supplies classical solutions, and one understands that the work may have been adopted, like those of Shinran himself, as a text in the services of the sect. ^⁵6

Among the three fundamental Sutras of Amidism, the Jodo had a more and more marked preference for the Meditation Sutra on Amitayus, Kan Muriojukio, which proposed, in addition to the nembutsu, various subjects of meditation, and which seems indeed to have wanted to inculcate the idea “that the perfections inherent in the Pure Land are realisable (also) by the force of mental concentration”. The Jodo was opened in this way to an influence which tended to minimise, despite Honen, the unique importance of the tariki. ^⁵7 The Shin, which as been called “the school of tariki” par excellence, preferred, as we have seen, the Long Sutra, because of the account it contains of the original Vow. It was the Short Sutra which enjoyed the entire favour of the Ji. In these three books of different ages, written in quite different perspectives, was found foreshadowed in advance, it has been said, the differentiation of Japanese Amidism into three sects. ^⁵8

The Ji never attained a very great development, and for some time it has been on the wane. On the contrary, up to a quite recent epoch, the Jodo continued in full vitality, with its three principal branches: the Chinzei, which adhered to Shokobo, the Seizen, founded by Zennebo, and the Kuhonji, descended form Chosai. It had lost, since the end of the sixteenth Century, its character of “sect-parasite” in order to organise itself in an independent manner, thanks to the protection of the Tokugawa. The Shin remained even more flourishing, with its branches, which co-existed peacefully, united by one and the same fidelity to their single Patriarch. Its believers frequently adopted the traditional form of confraternities: such as the Hoon-ko, whose members came together on each anniversary of Shinran’s death in order to recite the nembutsu, read some pages of the Sutras, listen to a short sermon and take a meal together. ^⁵9 The Shin gives a large place to preaching, and with regard to one of its branches it has been possible to speak of “propaganda carried out in American fashion”. ^⁶0 In these latter times it has also given birth to various associations which specialise in social activity, particularly the Itto-en, or “Brotherhood of the Lamp”, whose great animator was Tankô Nischida^⁶1 and after the war of 1914 - 1918 the charitable association Shin Hongenji Ja was one of the most powerful in the country. At the beginning of the Meiji era, when, in the name of the Dai-kyo, Buddhism, “disestablished”, was moreover seriously threatened, the Jodo and the Shin both took an active part in its defence. Soon however came the appeasement, and in 1875 an imperial decree gave Shinran the posthumous honorific title of Jenshin Daishi. ^⁶2 Curiously enough, the faithful disciples of Honen, the pietist of simple soul, quickly put themselves in the first rank as regards the learned elaboration of the doctrine, and it was a Jodo Monk Nincho (1645 - 1711), who made at the end of the seventeenth Century an elaborate collation of all the Buddhist Scriptures. The disciples of Shinran, who lived like an entirely ordinary man and refused to consider himself as a leader, soon organised the most strongly centralised sect of all. While their Master made a constant effort to rise above disputes and reconcile opposing camps, the most ardent swashbucklers of heresy lived in their ranks. ^⁶3 About the beginning of the present century, Japanese Amidism comprised, for these three sects, nearly 30,000 Temples, more than 22,000 Monks and Nuns, more than 16,000,000 believers, thus going extensively beyond all the other forms of Buddhism. ^⁶4

To which we can add the small group still surviving on the Yuzu-men-butsushu, as well as a third branch of the Tendai, the Ritsu, founded by Shinzei (1443 - 1495), which devotes itself to the cult of Amida in a more traditional framework. ^⁶5 Let us also point out that the Tenrikyo, or “religion of Divine Wisdom”, founded in 1838 and at the present moment on the full tide of prosperity, seems to owe a great deal to the Jodo of which its founder, Nakayama Miki, was at first the fervent adherent. ^⁶6

Whatever the metaphysical explanation proposed for its efficacy, or the absence, even the refusal of explanation, the practise of the repeated nembutsu was always honoured in Japan as in China, and in popular devotion as in that of Monks and recluses. It was naturally in the Jodo-Shu that it was most plentiful, but it is also met with elsewhere. A number of great personages were devoted to it, in a spirit which sometimes recalled only very remotely the spirit of Honen. It was thus that he who has been called the Richelieu of Japan, the great Ieyasu Tokugawa (1542 - 1616), who had been brought up in a “Jodo family”, drew from the invocation of Amida, after a first defeat, the martial courage which opened to him the road of conquest up to the domination of the whole empire. Following the political line violently inaugurated by Nobunaga, he did not favour the power of Buddhism; he was nonetheless occupied in the last five years of his life with repeating the nembutsu; he reached, it is said the total of 60,000 invocations a day. But what he had in mind in doing this was to obtain an immortality which would assimilate him to the most powerful Gods, in order to continue, after coming to dwell in the Pure Land, to protect his descendants and people. His devotion marks the introduction of a new formula in Ryobu-Shinto; the close unison of Shintoism and Jodo Amidism. ^⁶7

Buddhism might well have lost its former power: Amida remained dear to the Japanese. Everywhere people told the beads of the nembutsu “rosary”. On every side could be heard the sound of the small individual instrument, comparable to our bells or hand-bells, a plaque of metal hung from the belt and struck with a little mallet, used by devotees, on an equal footing with the “rosary”, in order to scan their recitation. Temples were in some degree specialised for the carrying out of collective performances: not long ago, in Kyoto, a Jodo Temples was called by a name which signifies “a million times”, and in the provinces of the North-East numerous are, at the entrance to villages, inscriptions engraved on stone directed to passers-by: “Repeat the nembutsu a million times.” ^⁶8 Furthermore, many Amidists had the wisdom to enter in no way into the dispute which we have recalled. The author of the Ohara go ko is their interpreter in the eclecticism of these verses:

And similarly the author of the Seiganji, when he causes to be said to one of his personages: “Without making a distinction between the single invocation and the ten invocations, Amida comes to meet those who have understood and those who are in error.” ^⁶9 In conclusion, with the same author and many others, all the Amidists would be able to take up in chorus, with a unanimous voice, this declaration of the Kan Muryojiukio, which itself only reproduces the promise given in former times by Sakyamuni, according to the Amida Sutra, on the summit of Mount Gridhrakuta:

1 The first known biography of Shinran is due to his second successor at the Hongwanji, Kakumyo Shonin (1270 - 1351). An English translation of it has been given in The Eastern Buddhist, vol. II, 1923, pp. 217 - 235. In the age of the hypercritical reaction, people have gone so far as to put in doubt the historicity of Shinran. C.B. Charles Eliot, Japanese Buddhism, p. 269.

2 Shu Osumi, History of the Religious and Philosophical Ideas of Japan, (Kyoto, 1929), p. 134. The author discerns the same general tendency in Dogen and Nichiren. James Murdoch, A History of Japan, I, 2d ed., (1925), pp. 481 - 483. In an article on The Buddha and Shinran, M. Shugaku Yamabe endeavoured to show the great place held by laymen in the first age of Buddhism, especially around Sakyamuni, as well as in the Jatakas: in The Eastern Buddhist, vol. II, 1923, pp. 260 - 277.

3 C.B. Alfred Foucher, The Life of Buddha. . ., p. 345: Sakyamuni is detached from the world, but he “does not flee it systematically, and agree to dine in town”; on the other hand the Sangha as conceived by him does not live in the desert, without relations with secular society; it is a militia, which must always be militant, always preaching (M. Foucher even compares it to the Order founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola). C.B. Jean Buhot, op. cit., p. 194.

7 The complete title of the work is Kenjodoshinjitsu-Kyogyosho-monsui, which means: “Anthology of texts from the Sutras expressing the authentic doctrine, ascesis and illumination of the Pure Land”.

9 C.B. the saying garnered by Yui-embo, Tannisho, I: “When the thought of saying the nembutsu awakens in your heart, by believing that you will attain birth in the Pure Land thanks to the inconceivable power of the original Vow, then you will share in the grace of Amida, which embraces all beings without forgetting a single one”. (cited edition, p. 2). It will be remarked however that Shinran maintains the necessity of externally expressing at least one invocation: C.B. the Mattosho, (collection of 23 letters), cited by D. T. Suzuki, Essays on Zen Buddhism, vol. 3 (translated Rene Daumal), p. 238.

1⁰ C.B. Leon Wieger, Chinese and Japanese Amidism, pp. 45 - 46. Junjiro Takakushu, The Essentials of Buddhist Philosophy, (Honolulu, 1947), pp. 172 - 174. Edward Conze, op. cit., pp. 204 - 205.

1¹ Commenting on this text: “The practices can last at the maximum for a whole lifetime, at the minimum for the space of a day, an hour, a thought; or else, from one thought or ten thoughts to an hour, a day, a lifetime”, Chan-t’ao had written: “The profound meaning of this passage is as follows: once we have conceived the thought of illumination (bodhi-citta) and take the Vow to put an end to this existence, there is no more coming back; we no longer have any goal other than the Pure Land.” Quoted by Paul Demieville, The Chinese Versions of the Milinda-panha, p. 238

1² A modern Shin author even accused the Chinzei school, one of the four branches of the Jodo (that which is connected with Shoboki) “of having contributed to the assimilation of Kosai’s teaching to that of the Hokestsu heretics, in order to cast in this way discredit on Shinran, whom one source presents as a disciple of Kosai.” (P. Demieville, loc. cit., p. 243)

1³ Ryukwan nonetheless received the title of first Patriarch of the multiple thoughts branch, whose centre was installed in the Chorakuji a monastery where Ryukwan had lived. This branch died out in the fourteen Century. C.B. Paul Demieville, loc. cit., pp. 243 - 244.

1⁴ “We must not have disputes on the subject of the single thought or multiple thoughts . . . Indeed, from the Jodo point of view, it is a question only of birth in the Pure Land attained by the act of thinking of the Buddha, and not at all of birth attained by a single thought or multiple thoughts.” (Quoted by P. Demieville, op. cit., p. 244).

1⁵ “Those who visit the great western Honganji of Kyoto, which is one of the most magnificent Japanese sanctuaries, can still see there Shinran’s statue, sculpted by himself, which he offered to his daughter. After the Saint’s death the ashes coming from the cremation were mixed with lacquer and used to varnish the statue.” H.H. Gowen, History of Japan, p. 176: He is supposed to have said, at the moment of death: “Throw my remains in the river: don’t encumber yourselves with any funeral formalities.” (According to The Ideals of the Shinran-Followers, 1918, p. 29).

1⁶ There again is a resemblance to the thought of Luther, who denounced, for example in St. Bernard, a contradiction between his faith in the mercy of God and his monastic life (he declared him saved “in votis sine votis”).

1⁹ It is barely reckoning from him that Ryobu-Shinto appears fully systematised; and it is in his epoch that there appear to have been forged the legends attributing his precise paternity to Gyogi and to Emperor Shomu. C.B. Shu Osumi, op. cit., p. 195. Rennyo’s writings were again republished in 1937 in Kyoto by M. Inaba.

2¹ C.B. Giken Ito, Rennyo Shonin (His Holiness) and Renso Aki, in The Japan Science Review, vol. 1, 1950, pp. 245 - 247. We know that a century later, in 1571, the Shogun Ota Nobunaga had to undertake to reconcile in his fashion the two monastery - fortresses, by destroying them both and massacring their inhabitants. His energetic action struck contemporaries with helpless amazement, and the political power of Buddhism was forever affected by it.

2² It was through the mediation of the Sanson sect, one of the six ancient sects of Nara, that Nagarjuna’s great work, the Churon, was imposed on Japanese Buddhism. C.B. G.B. Sansom, op, cit., pp. 448 - 450. In a modern study on the religion of Shinran, everything to do with knowledge and faith is treated directly according to Nagarjuna: Gessho Sazaki, The Religion of Shinran Shonin, in The Eastern Buddhist, vol. II, pp. 236 - 259.

2³ A milder interpretation could see here simply an “interiorization” analogous to that found in St. John in relation to the synoptic gospels. C.B. Jo, VI, 47: “He who believes has eternal life.”

2⁴ Bunziu Nanjio, A Short History of the Twelve Japanese Buddhist Sects (Tokyo). Ryannon Fujishima, op. cit., pp. 140 - 141. C.B. A.K. Reischauer, A Catechism of the Shin Sect (Buddhism), in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1912, pp. 333 - 395 (translation from the Japanese of R. Nishimoto, Shinshu Hyakuwa).

2⁶ C.B. The Works of St. Catherine de Gênes, preceded by her Life by Viscount Mesie-Theodore de Bussierre, (1926), p. 34: “The conversion of Catherine did not come about little by little, and gradually; it was complete and instantaneous. The Saint did not understand that the soul which loves God is able not to belong wholly to Him from the first moment, and that it is possible to go forward methodically in the paths of love. She sometimes had discussions, on this subject, with her sister-in-law Thomasina Fiesca, a devout woman of very great merit . . . Thomasina . . . gently cut the bonds which had held her in their embrace; in a word, she wended her way slowly towards perfection, by acquired virtues, while Catherine attached it in a single bound, by God’s grace.” A formal analogy, which is expressed through identical metaphors, without prejudice to the difference of spiritual content. See also The Cloud of Unknowing, ch. 37: “. . . Their private prayers are always more suddenly devoted to God without any special direction or forethought, nor is there anything which prepares them or leads them.” (translated Armel Guerne, 1953, p. 121).

3³ The Tannisho (Tract on Deploring the Heterodoxies), an important Textbook of Shin Buddhism founded by Shinran (translated from Japanese into English by Tosui Imadate, Kyoto, The Eastern Buddhist Society, 1928), IX, (pp. 12 - 13). For a long time the name of the author remained unknown; a postscript was added to the work in the fifteenth Century by Rennyo Shonin.

3⁷ The Tannisho, IV, p. 7. C.B. V. p. 8: “I, Shinran, have never, not even once, recited the nembutsu with the intention of filial piety towards my parents. The reason is that all beings are in reality my parents; all have been my father, mother, brother or sister in one of their successive existences . . .”

3⁸ “They vow to be born in this Kingdom by the Transfer of Merits which consists in hanging cloth materials, lighting lamps, scattering flowers or burning incense.” C.B. Hobogirin, II, p. 102. In the Sange, the officiants intone these verses while scattering flowers either natural or of coloured paper; in the second verse, the name of the Buddha can vary, for the festival is not peculiar to the Amidists alone.

4⁵ It was mainly beginning with Genshin, and in the Sammon branch of the Tendai, that the wasan were cultivated in Japanese Buddhism. Three categories were distinguished: verse, prose or free verse, and Chinese verses read in the Japanese fashion (kundala). C.B. Hobogirin, fasc. II, p. 103.

4⁶ Hymn translated into English by M. Anesaki, History of Japanese Religion, (1930), p. 185, in the edition of the “Wasan of the Pure Land” published in Kyoto in 1923. “When you see the great change coming which happens unexpectedly to every man,” Shinran also said, “arouse your heart to trust in Amida.” (in A.K. Reischauer, Studies in Japanese Buddhism, p. 110).

4⁷ Expressions of Wang-si, Preface to the Ratification of the true principles of the Great Vehicle of Sudden Awakening (eighth Century), quoted by Paul Demieville, The Council of Lhasa, (1952), p. 23.

5¹ Junjiro Takakusu, op, cit., pp. 171 and 174. M.W. de Visser, op. cit., bk. 2, pp. 339 - 340. The recitation of the Hymns six times a day instils the necessity of devout thoughts at each moment: M. Anesaki, History . . ., p. 187. Its founder’s persuasion of his immediate inspiration by Amida does not prevent this sect from considering Kuya as his forerunner and likewise making use of Ryonin’s name.

5² A performance of Seiganji is attested in 1464. This Nô reports that Ippen heard the oracle in the course of a retreat of a hundred days which he made in Kumano. C.B. G. Renondeau, op, cit., pp. 108 and 142 - 143. See also Noel Peri, Studies in the Japanese Lyrical Drama (Nô), Bulletin of the French School of the Far East, vol. 9, (1909).

5³ H.H. Coates and R. Ishizuka, op. cot., pp. 54 - 56 and p. 339. Charles Eliot, op. cit., pp. 273 - 274. (C.B. infra, ch. XII - Honen and Shinran both based themselves indeed on their own experience, but they situated it inside a tradition. They thought to reproduce the teaching of Sakyamuni and other Masters. Honen said however: “The antiquity of a doctrine cannot decide of itself whether this doctrine is true or false.” C.B. Shunjo, ch. V, (p. 162). D.T. Suzuki, The Development . . ., loc. cit., pp. 285 - 286.

5⁶ The Gobunsho or Ofumi of Rennyo Shonin, introduction and translation of ten letters in the first section (the complete work comprises five sections), James Troup, in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. 17, I, (1889), pp. 101 - 125. These “Letters” are written in the form of questions and answers. There will be found in Hans Haas, “Amida Buddha unsere Zuflucht”, (1910), pp. 34 and 142, information about another of Rennyo’s writings, Ryogi-mon.

5⁷ Coates, pp. 59 - 64. It will be recalled that Genshin then Honen found the light in Chan-t’ao’s Commentary on the Meditation Sutra. Genshin’s Ojoyoshu is also in use in the Jodo and the Shin. The Jodo still especially esteems the Ojoron of Ten-jen (Vasubandhu). The centre of the sect is the Chion-in in Kyoto. Of course, with time and the favour of the state there came luxury, indulgence, indolence. The dignitaries of the Jodo often became the emulators of those of the Tendai and Shingon.

5⁸ D.T. Suzuki, The Development . . ., loc. cit., pp. 294 - 295. It is fitting however to remark that the Short Sutra preaches salvation by faith alone in a manner perhaps more categorical than the Long Sutra, and on this score agreed perfectly with the Shin. But on the other hand it clearly shows that Amida is only one Buddha among others in infinite number.

6³ M. Anesaki, op. cit., pp. 184 - 186 and 304 - 305. The Ideals of Shinran-Followers, (1918), pp. 32 - 33, and p. 38: Shinran was “a quiet doer, not a loud talker”. The doctrine of the Shin was strongly systematised, in modern times, by Eku (1644 - 1721) and by Jimei (1749 - 1817).

6⁴ Figures given by Coates and Ishizuka, op. cit., historical introduction, pp. 64 - 65. C.B. Sansom, Japan, p. 450, sects of the Pure Land in Sylvain Levi Memorial, (1937), pp. 325 - 336 (Inventory of Japanese Buddhist Sects, 1927, according to a Japanese year book of 1925.

6⁵ Junjiro Takakusu, op. cit., pp. 131 and 169 - 170. C.B. Charles Eliot, Japanese Buddhism, p. 386: “It can be asked however whether Shinzei does not represent more correctly than Honen or Shinran the teaching of the three fundamental Sutras, nothing in which goes to show that they would have approved the ignorance of everything Gautama preached in theory and practice, and even of many of the things added by the Mahayana.”

6⁷ Coates, pp. 61 - 63. M. Steichen, The Daimyo Christians, p. 337. It was in the epoch when the nembutsu seemed already to monopolise him, that Ieyasu issued his edict against the Christians. The apostates had to rejoin the Zen or the Jodo. (C.R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 1951, p. 391).

6⁸ Noel Peri, Five Nô, p. 156. It is a matter here of a practice attested as early as the twelfth Century by Chingai, Bodeishin-shu, I: Coates, p. 243. On Buddhist rosaries. C.B. Trans. of the As. Soc. of japan, IX (1881), pp. 173 s.s. - Dom Anselm Nguyen Ngre Ngai, The Prayer of the Bonzes, in Prayer (testimonies), 43, 1954, p. 207): There could be seen “at the time of bombardments and machine-fun blasts . . . Buddhists flat on their stomachs under beds, the Buddha squeezed against their chest, repeating, without slackening”, the nembutsu, “in order to be protected against bursting bombs or machine-gun bullets.”

7⁰ According to the version of Samghavarman (252): “After my nirvana, doubts about the way to salvation will spring up again among men. In the course of generations yet to come, the teaching of the Sutras will be forgotten. The Law will come to an end. Out of compassion for all beings, I leave you this Sutra on Amitayus, for the salvation of all those who will receive it, esteem it and make the call that it indicates.” C.B. Leon Wieger, Amidism. . ., pp. 13 - 14; G. Renondeau, op. cit., p. 137. Zennebo said the same: All the Sutras, vinayas and sastras will perish, but the pure nembutsu will remain (Shunjo, ch. XLVII, pp. 764 - 765). C.B. the poem of A.R. Zorn, Namu Amida Butsu, in The Young East, III, (1927), p. 187.