Violence and Nonviolence in Shinran
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2018, Vol 9, Issue 6
Abstract
This article examines the Pure Land Buddhist thinker Shinran (1173–1263), from whose teachings the Shin Buddhist tradition emerged. Shinran’s ideas provide an alternative model for considering moral judgments and issues related to violence. Since Shinran viewed violence as a mode of human action, the author asks how violence, whether inflicted or suffered, is to be understood by Shin Buddhists. This article further discusses how practitioners engaging the Pure Land path might deal with it, and the relevance of Shinran’s understanding here and now. This line of inquiry expands to consider how Shinran’s approach relates to norms used in modern discussions of violence. It scrutinizes the double structure of ethical awareness, discussing in particular how usual judgments of good and evil action can be contextualized and relativized. In the section dedicated to defusing the violence of ignorance, the author introduces Shinran’s nonviolent, nonconfrontational response, and analyzes how Shinran recasts the Buddhist stories of Ajata´satru and A ¯ ngulim ˙ ala in relation to ¯ his understanding of the “five grave offenses”—specifically murder and near matricide—usually understood as excluding practitioners from the benefits of Amida Buddha’s Vows. The author shows that Shinran focuses on saving even the evil, not solely the worthy, thus rejecting the exclusion provision of the Eighteenth Vow.
Authors and Affiliations
Dennis Hirota
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP26039
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9060178
- Views 345
- Downloads 11
Christian Churches and the Boko Haram Insurgency in Cameroon: Dilemmas and Responses
The spillover of the terrorist activities of Boko Haram, a Nigerian jihadi group, into Cameroon’s north has resulted in security challenges and humanitarian activity opportunities for Christian churches. The insurgents...
“One Should Have Two Homelands”: Discord and Hope in Soma Morgenstern’s Sparks in the Abyss
Soma Morgenstern’s three-part novel Sparks in the Abyss, written between 1930 and 1943, exudes a spirit of serenity and optimism at the same time that its narrative is structured by repeated scenes of conflict and viol...
New Light on a Lost Cause: Atticus G. Haygood’s Universalizing Spirituality
The American tragedy of slavery and the Civil War provides the backdrop for the exemplary spirituality of Atticus Haygood (1839–1896). The son of a Georgia slaveholder, Haygood served as a chaplain in the Confederate a...
‘Neither Victim nor Executioner’: Essential Insights from Secularization Theory for the Revitalization of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Contemporary World
This essay explores two recent expressions of hostility towards secularization by Russian Orthodox officials (one from the Holy Synod of ROCOR and the other from Metropolitan Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev), and evaluates...
Secularization and the Loss of Love in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress
In this paper, I place Bunyan’s popular Pilgrim’s Progress into a cultural context infused with, and informed by, a change from a sacred to secular preunderstanding. I discuss the ways that Bunyan wrestles with these c...