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Published January 1, 1998
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December 15, 2025
A SOMEWHAT ‘PERSONAL’ EXPLANATION OF SHIN BUDDHISM
Taitetsu Unno (1929-2014) was a Japanese Buddhist scholar and an ordained Shin Buddhist minister. He taught Buddhism and Japanese aesthetics at Smith College from 1971 until his retirement in 1998.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1998 book, “There are 84,000 paths to liberation and freedom from self-delusion, according to Buddhism. This wealth of possibilities may seem to make liberation more than accessible, but they are not spelled out in some enlightenment mail-order catalog. Which path a person takes is often not a matter of choice but decided by the accidents of birth, circumstance, encounters, and quirks of fate. Yet there are defining moments for each of us that can change the entire course of life. Such a moment for me was the suicide of my best friend. I was 24 at that time.
“I had been in Japan for two years, following my graduation from UC Berkeley in 1951. My ambition was to become a Buddhist scholar… I enrolled in the Tokyo University graduate school… Living in Japan, which at that time was still suffering the devastation of World War II, I came to have mixed feelings about my new home. Having grown up in a Japanese-American family, I could easily identify with its rich cultural past but not with its contemporary history and its people. It was difficult to fully comprehend the kind of suffering that war had brought to them. And yet in America, I had never really felt at home either. My family and I had been among the 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry who had been incarcerated behind barbed-wire fences in ‘concentration camps’… without due process of law. Now in Japan but still lost and confused, a stranger in a strange land, I was searching for some kind of mooring. It was at that point that I was befriended by Teruo, a brilliant, older philosophy student also at Tokyo University.
“I felt a close kinship with him, in part because of our shared interest in discussing issues of a philosophical nature… But a dark, persistent cloud hovered over the bright promise of Teruo’s future: his frail health, due to tuberculosis in his youth… He became increasingly frustrated that he could not sustain the vigorous demands of a highly competitive academic life. One day of hard studying needed to be compensated by two full days of quiet rest. When we experience pain and suffering, it is only natural to ask, ‘Why?’ Such was probably the case when Teruo one day asked me, ‘What is karma in Buddhism?’… I failed to appreciate the deep feeling that motivated his question, and I glibly quoted some abstract theories I had just read in a Buddhist text and changed the subject… he had tickets for a dance the next evening… We could go … together…
“Late that [next] afternoon… I read the [newspaper] headline with horror---‘College Student Commits Suicide.’ I instantly knew that it was Teruo. He had taken an overdose of sleeping pills… I rushed … to his home, hoping somehow to comfort his mother… Though I searched desperately for words to … comfort her, none came forth… I kept thinking of Teruo’s question to me---what is karma, really?… Who am I? What am I? Where did my life come from and where was it going?… I thus found myself at an absolute impasse… Yet, as all these questions and frustrations were circulating in my mind, I remembered the Pure Land parable of the two rivers and white path…
“Slowly… after months of indecision… I began to find a faint sense of direction. The weight of… generations of Shin Buddhist priests on both my mother’s and father’s sides---became decisive… the world of Japanese Pure Land opened up… I discovered that these questions are not uncommon among contemporary people… All world religions grapple with these questions, but in my case, due to fortunate karmic circumstances, Shin Buddhism provided the answers… The Pure Land tradition has been my path. It is because of my own personal experience with it that I wish to share it with those who may not be too familiar with the depth, scope, and richness of this significant expression of Buddhism.”
He explains in the first chapter, “The beginnings of the Pure Land tradition go back to the emergence of Mahayana Buddhism in the 1st century BCE, approximately five centuries after the founding of the religion by the historical Buddha in India… Buddhism in Japan grew rapidly in the 6th century under imperial and aristocratic patronage. It was welcomed as the carrier of continental civilization … The Buddhism for the elite, however, gradually declined in power and influence… As the established social order disintegrated, the Pure Land movement spread among all classes, especially welcomed by those who had been excluded from the monastic path. The Primal Vow of Amida [Buddha]… now appeared as a major force on the stage of history…” (Pg. 1-3)
He continues, “In the year 1175 the Tendai monk Honen broke with the established center of monastic learning… and proclaimed the establishment of an independent Jodo or Pure Land school… Honen rejected the meditative approach and advocated the singular practice of… the intoning of ‘namu-amida-butsu’ (‘I entrust myself to Amida Buddha’)… the newly established Pure Land teaching … met the spiritual hunger of the people and attracted a mass following… Among Honen’s disciples was Shinran (1173-1263)… [who] remained in the outlying provinces to spread the nembutsu teaching… [After he died] his descendants and followers established a separate school, called Jodo Shinshu, and regarded him as founder… Jodo Shinshu is also known as ‘Shin Buddhism,’ and sometimes is used synonymously with ‘Pure Land Buddhism.’ This identification, however, is misleading, because there are other forms of Pure Land teachings… in Japan, Korea, China, and Vietnam.” (Pg. 3-4)
He adds, “Shin Buddhism makes no sharp distinction between clergy and laity as far as the possibility of enlightenment is concerned. Everyone, regardless of differences in age, class, gender. Profession, or moral culpability, would attain Buddhahood by the working of great compassion. It naturally followed that this religious path would be harmonious with family life. Consequently… the time-honored celebacy of monastic life was reversed… The dojo or ‘training place’ for the practice of Buddhism is everyday, secular life, not some cloistered enclosure or privileged space.” (Pg. 5)
He notes, “Though Shin Buddhism improvised a radically new form of practice, its goal is one and the same with that of Mahayana Buddhism. The goal is to awaken to the true self as a manifestation of dharma or ‘reality-as-is.’” (Pg. 6) He suggests, “Shin Buddhism comes alive for those who live in the valley and in the shadows. It challenges people to discover the ultimate meaning of life in the abyss of the darkness of ignorance… The wonder of this teaching is that liberation is made available to us not because we are wise but BECAUSE we are ignorant, limited, imperfect, and finite… we who are foolish beings are transformed into the very opposite by the power of great compassion.” (Pg. 11-12)
He acknowledges, “One of the closest parallels to this nembutsu practice in world religions is the Jesus Prayer of the Eastern Orthodox Church… [It] urges people to undertake the ceaseless prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.’ At one point the pilgrim is required to undertake the prayer 12,000 times a day…” (Pg. 29)
He states, “the starting point of Pure Land Buddhism is not Amida Buddha but Dharmakara Bodhisattva. As a bodhisattva, Dharmakara saw deeply into the immense sufferings of all beings, identified with them completely, discerned their causes, found a way to eliminate them, and prepared a practice for each being to attain liberation.” (Pg. 36)
He points out, “The centripetal self-concern is transformed into centrifugal other-concern by the power of the great compassion without nullifying or eradicating karmic evil. This may sound illogical and unreasonable, but it is possible because evil in Buddhism has no ontological status.” (Pg. 70-71)
He notes, “Religious life does not require us to be ‘good’ or ‘virtuous’ as a condition. The only requirement is the openness to the beneficent, transforming power of the Primal Vow.” (Pg. 120)
He explains, “In Buddhism hell does not exist as a place; it is created by each individual’s thought, speech, and action. Hell is the consequence of karmic life for which each person alone is accountable.” (Pg. 158) On the other hand, “The Pure Land defies our conventional understanding, because it is not an object of dualistic knowing. It does not exist, for example, like Hawaii, the paradise of the Pacific, in the middle of an ocean. But it can be appreciated fully, when our religious quest evolves and matures, free of discursive rhetoric and conceptualized notions regarding reality.” (Pg. 178)
He says, “birth in the Pure Land means simultaneous attainment of Buddhahood. At the moment of death one is freed of all karmic indebtedness… Furthermore, since perfect enlightenment is attained in the Pure Land, one returns immediately to samsara for the salvation of all beings… The ultimate goal of a Shin Buddhist is not personal salvation but the deliverance of all beings from samsara.” (Pg. 181-182)
He admits, “My burning question when my friend took his own life was, Is my friend happy now? But with the passing of years I realize that as human beings, wandering in the darkness of ignorance, we can never know what is beyond this life.” (Pg. 186) “Finally, is my friend who took his own life happy now? Who is to say? As far as I am concerned, I have no choice but to entrust myself to the working of great compassion that vowed to work ceaselessly until all beings … are liberated….” (Pg. 209)
This book will interest those who are studying Shin Buddhism.
Taitetsu Unno (1929-2014) was a Japanese Buddhist scholar and an ordained Shin Buddhist minister. He taught Buddhism and Japanese aesthetics at Smith College from 1971 until his retirement in 1998.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1998 book, “There are 84,000 paths to liberation and freedom from self-delusion, according to Buddhism. This wealth of possibilities may seem to make liberation more than accessible, but they are not spelled out in some enlightenment mail-order catalog. Which path a person takes is often not a matter of choice but decided by the accidents of birth, circumstance, encounters, and quirks of fate. Yet there are defining moments for each of us that can change the entire course of life. Such a moment for me was the suicide of my best friend. I was 24 at that time.
“I had been in Japan for two years, following my graduation from UC Berkeley in 1951. My ambition was to become a Buddhist scholar… I enrolled in the Tokyo University graduate school… Living in Japan, which at that time was still suffering the devastation of World War II, I came to have mixed feelings about my new home. Having grown up in a Japanese-American family, I could easily identify with its rich cultural past but not with its contemporary history and its people. It was difficult to fully comprehend the kind of suffering that war had brought to them. And yet in America, I had never really felt at home either. My family and I had been among the 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry who had been incarcerated behind barbed-wire fences in ‘concentration camps’… without due process of law. Now in Japan but still lost and confused, a stranger in a strange land, I was searching for some kind of mooring. It was at that point that I was befriended by Teruo, a brilliant, older philosophy student also at Tokyo University.
“I felt a close kinship with him, in part because of our shared interest in discussing issues of a philosophical nature… But a dark, persistent cloud hovered over the bright promise of Teruo’s future: his frail health, due to tuberculosis in his youth… He became increasingly frustrated that he could not sustain the vigorous demands of a highly competitive academic life. One day of hard studying needed to be compensated by two full days of quiet rest. When we experience pain and suffering, it is only natural to ask, ‘Why?’ Such was probably the case when Teruo one day asked me, ‘What is karma in Buddhism?’… I failed to appreciate the deep feeling that motivated his question, and I glibly quoted some abstract theories I had just read in a Buddhist text and changed the subject… he had tickets for a dance the next evening… We could go … together…
“Late that [next] afternoon… I read the [newspaper] headline with horror---‘College Student Commits Suicide.’ I instantly knew that it was Teruo. He had taken an overdose of sleeping pills… I rushed … to his home, hoping somehow to comfort his mother… Though I searched desperately for words to … comfort her, none came forth… I kept thinking of Teruo’s question to me---what is karma, really?… Who am I? What am I? Where did my life come from and where was it going?… I thus found myself at an absolute impasse… Yet, as all these questions and frustrations were circulating in my mind, I remembered the Pure Land parable of the two rivers and white path…
“Slowly… after months of indecision… I began to find a faint sense of direction. The weight of… generations of Shin Buddhist priests on both my mother’s and father’s sides---became decisive… the world of Japanese Pure Land opened up… I discovered that these questions are not uncommon among contemporary people… All world religions grapple with these questions, but in my case, due to fortunate karmic circumstances, Shin Buddhism provided the answers… The Pure Land tradition has been my path. It is because of my own personal experience with it that I wish to share it with those who may not be too familiar with the depth, scope, and richness of this significant expression of Buddhism.”
He explains in the first chapter, “The beginnings of the Pure Land tradition go back to the emergence of Mahayana Buddhism in the 1st century BCE, approximately five centuries after the founding of the religion by the historical Buddha in India… Buddhism in Japan grew rapidly in the 6th century under imperial and aristocratic patronage. It was welcomed as the carrier of continental civilization … The Buddhism for the elite, however, gradually declined in power and influence… As the established social order disintegrated, the Pure Land movement spread among all classes, especially welcomed by those who had been excluded from the monastic path. The Primal Vow of Amida [Buddha]… now appeared as a major force on the stage of history…” (Pg. 1-3)
He continues, “In the year 1175 the Tendai monk Honen broke with the established center of monastic learning… and proclaimed the establishment of an independent Jodo or Pure Land school… Honen rejected the meditative approach and advocated the singular practice of… the intoning of ‘namu-amida-butsu’ (‘I entrust myself to Amida Buddha’)… the newly established Pure Land teaching … met the spiritual hunger of the people and attracted a mass following… Among Honen’s disciples was Shinran (1173-1263)… [who] remained in the outlying provinces to spread the nembutsu teaching… [After he died] his descendants and followers established a separate school, called Jodo Shinshu, and regarded him as founder… Jodo Shinshu is also known as ‘Shin Buddhism,’ and sometimes is used synonymously with ‘Pure Land Buddhism.’ This identification, however, is misleading, because there are other forms of Pure Land teachings… in Japan, Korea, China, and Vietnam.” (Pg. 3-4)
He adds, “Shin Buddhism makes no sharp distinction between clergy and laity as far as the possibility of enlightenment is concerned. Everyone, regardless of differences in age, class, gender. Profession, or moral culpability, would attain Buddhahood by the working of great compassion. It naturally followed that this religious path would be harmonious with family life. Consequently… the time-honored celebacy of monastic life was reversed… The dojo or ‘training place’ for the practice of Buddhism is everyday, secular life, not some cloistered enclosure or privileged space.” (Pg. 5)
He notes, “Though Shin Buddhism improvised a radically new form of practice, its goal is one and the same with that of Mahayana Buddhism. The goal is to awaken to the true self as a manifestation of dharma or ‘reality-as-is.’” (Pg. 6) He suggests, “Shin Buddhism comes alive for those who live in the valley and in the shadows. It challenges people to discover the ultimate meaning of life in the abyss of the darkness of ignorance… The wonder of this teaching is that liberation is made available to us not because we are wise but BECAUSE we are ignorant, limited, imperfect, and finite… we who are foolish beings are transformed into the very opposite by the power of great compassion.” (Pg. 11-12)
He acknowledges, “One of the closest parallels to this nembutsu practice in world religions is the Jesus Prayer of the Eastern Orthodox Church… [It] urges people to undertake the ceaseless prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.’ At one point the pilgrim is required to undertake the prayer 12,000 times a day…” (Pg. 29)
He states, “the starting point of Pure Land Buddhism is not Amida Buddha but Dharmakara Bodhisattva. As a bodhisattva, Dharmakara saw deeply into the immense sufferings of all beings, identified with them completely, discerned their causes, found a way to eliminate them, and prepared a practice for each being to attain liberation.” (Pg. 36)
He points out, “The centripetal self-concern is transformed into centrifugal other-concern by the power of the great compassion without nullifying or eradicating karmic evil. This may sound illogical and unreasonable, but it is possible because evil in Buddhism has no ontological status.” (Pg. 70-71)
He notes, “Religious life does not require us to be ‘good’ or ‘virtuous’ as a condition. The only requirement is the openness to the beneficent, transforming power of the Primal Vow.” (Pg. 120)
He explains, “In Buddhism hell does not exist as a place; it is created by each individual’s thought, speech, and action. Hell is the consequence of karmic life for which each person alone is accountable.” (Pg. 158) On the other hand, “The Pure Land defies our conventional understanding, because it is not an object of dualistic knowing. It does not exist, for example, like Hawaii, the paradise of the Pacific, in the middle of an ocean. But it can be appreciated fully, when our religious quest evolves and matures, free of discursive rhetoric and conceptualized notions regarding reality.” (Pg. 178)
He says, “birth in the Pure Land means simultaneous attainment of Buddhahood. At the moment of death one is freed of all karmic indebtedness… Furthermore, since perfect enlightenment is attained in the Pure Land, one returns immediately to samsara for the salvation of all beings… The ultimate goal of a Shin Buddhist is not personal salvation but the deliverance of all beings from samsara.” (Pg. 181-182)
He admits, “My burning question when my friend took his own life was, Is my friend happy now? But with the passing of years I realize that as human beings, wandering in the darkness of ignorance, we can never know what is beyond this life.” (Pg. 186) “Finally, is my friend who took his own life happy now? Who is to say? As far as I am concerned, I have no choice but to entrust myself to the working of great compassion that vowed to work ceaselessly until all beings … are liberated….” (Pg. 209)
This book will interest those who are studying Shin Buddhism.
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