Shinran

Shinran was born in the Heian capital region, traditionally at Hino near Kyoto, into the aristocratic Hino branch of the Fujiwara clan.

As a young boy Shinran was ordained and spent about twenty years practicing as a monk in the Tendai monastic complex on Mount Hiei.

After a hundred-day retreat at Rokkakudo temple, Shinran abandoned Tendai practice and joined Honen's Pure Land movement, embracing the exclusive nembutsu.

When the court suppressed Honen's movement, Shinran was stripped of monastic status and banished to Echigo on the Japan Sea coast, taking the name Gutoku ('foolish bald-headed one').

Breaking with monastic celibacy, Shinran married Eshinni, with whom he raised several children; the marriage embodied his teaching that salvation was open to householders.

After being pardoned, Shinran settled in Hitachi province, where he spent some twenty years spreading Pure Land teaching among farmers and provincial warriors.

Shinran began his major doctrinal work, the Kyogyoshinsho, systematically grounding his teaching of salvation through the entrusting heart (shinjin) in Buddhist scripture.

In his final decades in Kyoto, Shinran wrote extensively for his Kanto followers and, in 1256, disowned his eldest son Zenran for distorting his teachings.

Shinran died in Kyoto at about ninety years of age; his followers later organized his lineage into the Jodo Shinshu school centered on the Hongan-ji.