Hans Haas, the Songs of Buddha, and Their Sounds of Truth

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 161-194
Author(s):  
Esben Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Pure Land ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
Pure Land Buddhism

Abstract The writings of German missionary Hans Haas (1868–1934) were seminal texts which greatly influenced how many Europeans came to understand Japanese Buddhism. Haas became a significant actor in this early reception of Japanese Buddhism after he began working as an editor for the journal Zeitschrift für Missionskunde und Religionswissenschaft while stationed in Japan from 1898–1909. Haas covered all areas and aspects of Japanese Buddhism, from editing and translating texts such as Sukhavati Buddhism (1910a) into German to cross-religious comparisons of Buddhist songs and legends. This paper seeks to identify various elements which contributed to the development of Japanese Buddhism in Europe, paying special attention to the role of Haas’s work. In particular, it seeks to reconstruct his understanding of Pure Land Buddhism by demonstrating how a Protestant interpretative scheme, particularly that of Lutheran Protestantism, dominated much of the early reception of Japanese Buddhism in Europe.

Materiality and Spiritual Economies in Premodern Japanese Buddhism: A Problem in Historical Change

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galen Amstutz
Keyword(s):  
Good Deal ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Japanese History ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
Pure Land Buddhism ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Cognitive Shift ◽  
Jodo Shinshu

Abstract The recent emphasis on materiality in religion has encouraged a good deal of attention to materiality in Buddhism, but that attention has fallen entirely on Buddhist traditions with conventional monastic orientations. Yet the major Japanese Buddhist school known as True Pure Land Buddhism (Jōdo Shinshū) has also historically possessed a highly important, if different, material dimension, for which one touchpoint has been its merchant members called Ōmi shōnin who flourished in later premodern Japanese history. After alluding to the difficulty of isolating the ‘material’ in any religious culture, the article sketches the transition in Christian materialities in Europe which marked a cognitive shift from medieval modes of thinking (exteriorized, animistic-monistic, oriented to relics and ancestor religion) towards modern modes (interiorized, oriented to abstraction and the psychological individual). Against that paradigm, almost all premodern Buddhist materialities, including those in Japan, can be seen as medieval in nature. However, Jōdo Shinshū was a departure employing an innovatively interiorized doctrine. From that perspective, both Europe and Japan were highly complex civilizations displaying a long-term medieval-to-modern shift, which impacted the material manifestations of religions by gradually replacing older economies of ritual exchange with more modern-looking economies of preaching, religious publication and commercial life. Western scholarship has resisted appreciating these issues in an Asian setting.

scholarly journals CHOOSE YOUR PARADISE. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MONK GENSHIN IN SETSUWA TALES

2021 ◽  
pp. 64-81
Author(s):  
NADEZHDA N. TRUBNIKOVA ◽  
◽  
IGOR V. GORENKO ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Main Character ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
Lay People ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Almost All ◽  
First Time

Monk Genshin (942-1017) went down in the history of Japanese Buddhism not only as a teacher of the Tendai school, who for the first time substantiated the teaching of Buddha Amida and the Pure Land, as a compiler of interpretations of sutras, treatises, sermons and many other works, but also as a hero of setsuwa didactic tales. Stories about him appear in the collection of legends about the miracles of the Lotus Sutra in the middle of the 11th century, then in the book of stories about the rebirth in the Pure Land and in the Konjaku monogatari shū of the early 12th century. Then, in almost all major collections of setsuwa, tales about Genshin are found, with the early detailed narratives being replaced by brief descriptions of individual episodes from his life. The stories talk about how Genshin from a temple monk became a hermit, about his relationship with his mother, about the works of the Buddhist scribe and his meetings with other monks and lay people, about miracles at the hour of his death. The peculiarity of these tales is that Genshin does not always appear in them as the main character: he often plays the more modest role of waki wanderer, a guest of other monks, priests and laity: in response to his questions, they reveal their understanding of the Buddhist path.

O̅TA GYU̅ICHI. «SHINCHŌ-KŌ KI», BOOK IX (COMMENTED TRANSLATION INTO RUSSIAN)

2020 ◽  
pp. 229-248
Author(s):  
S. A. Polkhov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
Russian Translation ◽  
Wall Paintings ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
Unique Information

The article provides a Russian translation of the book IX of «Shincho̅-ko̅ ki». This part of the chronicle narrates the renewal of the war between Nobunaga and Honganji Temple. The followers of the True School of Pure Land besieged in Ozaka managed to inflict painful counterattacks against the forces of the “unifier of Japan”. Nobunaga detachments, trying to capture the Kizu fortress on the outskirts of Ozaka were surrounded and defeated. Ban Naomasa, one of his prominent military leaders, was killed, the army from Ozaka attacked the Tenno̅ji fortress, and only the help immediately rendered by Nobunaga saved the garrison from death. After that, Nobunaga blocked Ozakа on land and at sea. However, the fleet of the Mo̅ri house, which joined the ranks of Nobunaga opponents, and the allies of Mo̅ri were able to defeat the naval forces of Nobunaga and deliver provisions to Ozaka, which allowed Honganji to continue the struggle. Book IX also contains a description of the construction of Azuti Castle and its main tower (tenshu), Nobunaga’s residence. The unique information of the chronicle formed the basis for the further reconstruction of the tenshu’s appearance. The castle became the personification of the wealth and omnipotence of Nobunaga, a reflection of his claims to the role of supreme ruler of Japan. The wall paintings of the main tower halls manifest the influence of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. The key symbols of the images are taken from Chinese political ideology.

Genshin's Ojōyōshū and the Construction of Pure Land Discourse in Heian Japan

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert F. Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Historical Background ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Central Portion ◽  
Substantial Portion ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Heian Period ◽  
Pure Land Buddhism ◽  
Time Part ◽  
India And China

The Ōjōyōshū, written by the Heian period Tendai monk Genshin (942-1017), played a pivotal role in establishing Pure Land Buddhism in Japan. This book is a study of the central teachings of the Ōjōyōshū. Furthermore, in order to situate this text in its historical background, a substantial portion of the volume is taken up with discussions of the development of Pure Land Buddhism before Genshin’s time and to Genshin’s event-filled life. Part One provides a brief survey of Pure Land Buddhism in India and China and then treats how it developed in Japan before Genshin’s time. Part Two focuses on the main events of Genshin’s life. Part Three turns to two main issues taken up in the Ōjōyōshū: its Pure Land cosmology and its nenbutsu teaching. In his description of the Pure Land cosmology, Genshin describes, in often graphic detail, the suffering inherent in the six realms of transmigration, including hell, and urges his readers to seek birth in Amida Buddha’s Pure Land, a realm beyond suffering. Furthermore, in the central portion of the Ōjōyōshū, Genshin presents a systematic analysis of the nenbutsu, or the practice of focusing one’s mind on Amida, which is the central practice for attaining birth in the Pure Land.

Chinese Pure Land Buddhism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles B. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Pure Land ◽  
Pure Land Buddhism

The Politics of Pure Land Buddhism in India

Numen ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galen Amstutz
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Social History ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Pure Land Buddhism

AbstractPure Land Buddhism achieved its primary influence in East Asia because it supplied a nonmonastic, autonomous source of religious authority and practice to middle elites in those cultural regions. In contrast Pure Land failed to achieve any success in India. The explanation for the marginalization of Indian Pure Land is probably sociopolitical: Pure Land teachings tended to bypass not only the authority of the Hindu brahmins, but even the authority of Buddhist renunciate orders. Indian social history did not produce any significant middle elites concerned with such non-gurucentric religious authority. As a result, Buddhist India did not produce any innovations in the upâya of religious institutionalization in Buddhism.

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