Shinran

Shinran was born in 1173 near Kyoto, into a minor branch of the aristocratic Fujiwara family, and entered the Tendai order on Mount Hiei as a boy. After twenty years there he despaired of reaching enlightenment by his own practice. In 1201, after a retreat at the Rokkakudō temple in Kyoto, he became a disciple of Hōnen.

When the nembutsu was banned in 1207, Shinran was stripped of his monastic status and exiled to Echigo, on the Sea of Japan. He described himself thereafter as “neither monk nor layman”. He married, his wife Eshinni bore him several children, and he became one of the first Buddhist teachers in Japan to marry openly.

After his pardon he spent some twenty years in the Kantō region, teaching farmers and warriors, before returning to Kyoto in his sixties. There he completed his main work, the Kyōgyōshinshō, on the teaching, practice, faith and realization of the Pure Land way, and wrote many letters, hymns and short works. In old age he disowned his eldest son for misrepresenting his teaching. After his death, his disciple Yuien recorded his sayings in the Tannishō. His followers formed the Jōdo Shinshū, the True Pure Land school.