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| Recommended Publications |
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| HONEN'S SENCHAKUSHU |
| Passages on the Selection of the Nembutsu in the Original Vow
(Senchaku Hongan Nembutsu Shu) |
| by Honen Bo Genku |
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May 1998 University of Hawaii Press 320 pages
The Kuroda Institute Classics in East Asian Buddhism |
ISBN 0-8248-2110-6, paper $29.95
ISBN 0-8248-2025-8, cloth $55.00 |
| ORDER from University of Hawaii Press |
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This volume is a translation of Honen's seminal work, the Senchakushu. Previously unavailable in a complete English text, it marks the culmination of an eight year project of the Taisho University Institute for Comprehensive Buddhist Studies led by Professor Hirokawa Takatoshi. The Senchakushu was compiled over a period intense spiritual awakening for Honen and represents the full flowering of his life long journey to devotion in Amida Buddha. In the style of scholarship prevalent during this period, Honen presents this spiritual vision through adapted textual passages from the Pure Land tradition. This vision would seem to reflect a rather simplistic and single minded devotion to the practice of the nembutsu. Yet Prof. Hirokawa's insightful analysis in a lengthy and informative Introduction shows that while Honen's teaching offers such a simply available practice to the common man, it is also a finely tuned and deeply thought out vision of spiritual transformation. While the writings and teachings of Nichiren, Dogen, and Shinran have been widely translated and published in English, Honen's groundbreaking contributions have remained as unmined jewels to the international public. As the first major title in English to offer an in-depth and authoritative study of this seminal Japanese master, this volume represents a significant piece of scholarship for researchers and the general public.
With a detailed Glossary of Pure Land terms included, this volume is ideal for university level courses and an invaluable text for contextualizing and deepening an understanding of the most significant period in Japanese Buddhism.
Review of Honen's Senchakushu by Jan Van Bragt of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture |
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| RENEGADE MONK |
| Honen and Japanese Pure Land Buddhism |
by Machida, Soho
Translated and edited by Ioannis Mentzas |
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| Spring 1999 University of California Press 212 pages |
| ISBN: 0-520-21179-0, Cloth $40.00 |
| http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8076.html |
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Opening with the destruction and chaos that beleaguered Kyoto during Honen's lifetime, Soho Machida explores Honen's social context to discover the roots of his thought and the source of his popularity. The Old Buddhist regime had a stranglehold on peasants, he shows, by concocting images of vindictive spirits, hell, and an apocalyptic collapse of the law in these chaotic times. Machida asserts that when Honen countered such negative, menacing images by focusing his imagination on the Pure Land and actually affirming death, he became not only a radical thinker but also the leader of a revolutionary social movement--a medieval Japanese "liberation theology." Clearly argued and informed by contemporary Western theory, this book will become the definitive source on Honen's life and thought for decades to come. |
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