18 Facts About Shinran

Shinran was a Japanese Buddhist monk, who was born in Hino at the turbulent close of the Heian Period and lived during the Kamakura Period.

Shinran was a pupil of Honen and the founder of what ultimately became the sect of Japanese Buddhism.

However his precise status amongst Honen's followers is unclear as in the Seven Article Pledge, signed by Honen's followers in 1204, Shinran's signature appears near the middle among less-intimate disciples.

Honen and Shinran were exiled, with Shinran being defrocked and sent to Echigo Province.

Shinran married his wife, Eshinni, and had seven children with her.

Five years after being exiled in Echigo, in 1211, the nembutsu ban was lifted and Shinran was pardoned though he chose not to return to Kyoto at that time.

In 1224 Shinran authored his most significant text, Kyogyoshinsho, which is a series of selections and commentaries on Buddhist sutras supporting the new Pure Land Buddhist movement, and establishing a doctrinal lineage with Buddhist thinkers in India and China.

In 1234 Shinran left the Kanto area and returned to Kyoto, with his daughter Kakushinni.

On returning to Kyoto, Shinran discovered that his eldest son, Zenran, who remained in Hitachi and Shimotsuke provinces was telling people he received special teachings from Shinran and was otherwise leading people astray.

Shinran wrote stern letters to Zenran instructing him to cease his activities, but when Zenran refused, Shinran disowned him:.

Shinran died in Kyoto the year 1263 at the age of 90.

Shinran considered himself a lifelong disciple of Honen, in spite of their separation.

Therefore, reverencing the expositions of the treatise masters and relying on the exhortations of the religious teachers, I, the Bald-Headed Fool Shinran, abandoned forever the provisional path of manifold practices and good work, and separated myself once and for all from birth in the forest of the twin sala trees.

Elsewhere, Shinran is quoted in the Tannisho as saying:.

Shinran felt that this decline was inevitable, that Japan was already 600 years into age of Dharma Decline, and that people were no longer capable of maintaining Buddhist practice, let alone enlightenment.

Shinran acknowledged the religious practices of Japan outside the Buddhist tradition, including Shinto kami, spirits, divination, astrology, etc.

Shinran developed a Japanese Buddhist heresiology that constructed other forms of religious practice as equivalent to demon-worship; his followers would later use this equivocation both to enforce proper interpretations of Shinran's thought and to criticize "heretical" sects of Buddhism such as the Tachikawa-ryu.

On March 14,2008, what are assumed to be some of the ash remains of Shinran were found in a small wooden statue at the Jorakuji temple in Shimogyo-ku, Kyoto.