Honen 1133 – 1212

Honen was a Japanese Buddhist monk and the founder of the Pure Land school of Japanese Buddhism. After decades of intensive study and practice on Mount Hiei, he came to the conviction that the conditions of his age made the traditional path of monastic discipline impossible for most people, and that salvation must come from the boundless compassion of Amida Buddha rather than from human effort. His Senchakushu argued that the simple recitation of the nembutsu, in trust in Amida's vow, is the sufficient practice for rebirth in the Pure Land. He was exiled in his old age and his teaching survived to shape Japanese religion decisively.

Honen — Honen Bo Genku — was born in 1133 at Kume in the province of Mimasaka, the son of a local samurai official. After his father was killed in a feud when Honen was nine, the boy was sent to a temple and at fifteen entered the great Tendai monastic complex of Mount Hiei, where he was ordained and spent the next thirty years immersed in the curriculum of medieval Japanese Buddhism.

Through long study of the writings of the Chinese Pure Land master Shandao he came around 1175 to the decisive conviction that in the present age of the decline of the dharma the only effective practice was the recitation of the name of Amida Buddha (the nembutsu), and on this basis he left Mount Hiei to preach an exclusive devotion to nembutsu among samurai, court aristocrats, women, hunters, and prostitutes. His Senchakushu (Treatise on Selection, 1198) is the doctrinal manifesto of his school. Around him gathered the disciples — Shinran, Ben'en, Shoku, Ryukan, and Bencho — who would shape the later Japanese Pure Land tradition.

Persecution by the established Buddhist orders led to the proscription of his school and his exile to Tosa in 1207, from which he was permitted to return only shortly before his death. Honen is the founder of the Jodo (Pure Land) school and the most important Japanese religious reformer of the medieval period; his exclusive nembutsu became, through Shinran's True Pure Land school, the most widely practiced form of Japanese Buddhism. He died at Kyoto in 1212.