Cultivating Spirituality: A Modern Shin Buddhist Anthology,Used

Four Shin Buddhist thinkers reflect on their traditions encounter with modernity. Cultivating Spirituality is a seminal anthology of Shin Buddhist thought, one that reflects this traditions encounter with modernity. Shin (or Jodo Shinshu) is a popular form of Pure Land Buddhism, the most widely practiced form of Buddhism in Japan, but is only now becoming well known in the West. The lives of the four thinkers included in the book spanned the years 18631982, from the Meiji opening to the West to Japans establishment as an industrialized democracy and world economic power. Kiyozawa Manshi, Soga Ryojin, Kaneko Daiei, and Yasuda Rijin, all associated with Kyotos Otani University, dealt with the spiritual concerns of a society undergoing great change. Their philosophical orientation known as Seishinshugi (cultivating spirituality) provides a set of principles that prioritized personal, subjective experience as the basis for religious understanding. In addition to providing access to work generally unavailable in English, this volume also includes both a contextualizing introduction and introductions to each figure included. Buddhism, whether in Asia or the West, reveals itself to be a rich tapestry of diverse strands in which pioneers risked their standing and even their very lives to establish new pathways appropriate for their times and places. The editors invite the reader to explore developments in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism as emblematic of this tradition of innovation. Buddhadharma Mark L. Blum is Professor of Japanese at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He is the author of The Origins and Development of Pure Land Buddhism: A Study and Translation of Gyonens Jodo Homon Genrushoand the coeditor (with Shinya Yasutomi) of Rennyo and the Roots of Modern Japanese Buddhism. Robert F. Rhodes is Professor of Buddhist Studies at Otani University.