The Single Practice That Opened the Pure Land to Everyone

Honen marks a decisive turn in Japanese Buddhism: the moment a demanding monastic path was recast as something available to anyone. Trained on Mount Hiei in the elaborate scholastic and ritual Buddhism of the Tendai establishment, he became convinced that in the present degenerate age (mappo) ordinary people could not attain liberation through study, meditation, or precept-keeping. His answer, drawn from the Pure Land sutras, was the exclusive nembutsu: the sincere recitation of Namu Amida Butsu, "homage to Amida Buddha," relying wholly on the vow of the Buddha Amida to bring the reciter to rebirth in his Pure Land. This "selected" practice, set out in his treatise the Senchakushu, dispensed with the machinery of established Buddhism and was open to the illiterate, the poor, and the layperson equally. The established monasteries recognized the threat and had him exiled in old age. But the movement he founded, Jodo-shu, endured, and through his disciple Shinran it gave rise to what would become the largest Buddhist tradition in Japan.