Abstract:
This paper illustrates the relation between a momentum that may be called catastrophic and the teachings of Shinran (1173-1262), founder of the Japanese “True school of the Pure Land” Buddhism (Jôdo Shinshû). For the discussion of this relationship I draw on the concept of “Mappô” – the so called “last age” in Buddhism. In this age of Mappô the Buddhist believer was said to have reached a most unsuitable constitution for attaining Buddhahood, even if he remained a Buddhist believer. Therefore, especially the new Buddhist schools developing in Japan at that time were faced with the problem of appropriately challenging this difficult era and of making individuals feel that they were provided with a true teaching of salvation. Shinran often employed the concept of Mappô, making it into an element essential for the understanding of his teachings. For an analysis of the way Shinran utilised the concept of Mappô; I focus on parts of Shinran’s "Kyô-gyô-shin-shô" and his collection of hymns "Shôzômatsu jôdo wasan".
In a certain way it is possible to say that Shinran’s teachings are effective through a rhetoric of the catastrophic momentum. With Shinran, however, the catastrophic momentum is first bereft off its power to invoke fear of eternal suffering in hell, and is in a second step instead reconstructed – not as a catastrophe but as a task for one’s daily way of life. Thus, it is the main point of this paper to show that Shinran provided an important contribution to the rehabilitation of Buddhism as a real ars vivendi, which, while banishing the simple ritus into the background, emphasised a return to an intentional ethic activity and to the unreachable sublime.