Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhism: Creating a Shin BuddhistTheology in a Religiously Plural WorldReview by: Franca BellarsiNova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Vol. 9, No. 2 (November2005), pp. 131-132Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/nr.2005.9.2.131 .

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Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhism: Creating aShin Buddhist Theology in a Religiously Plural World. Edited by DennisHirota. State University of New York Press, 2000. 257 pages. $22.95 paper.

Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhism is definitelya book intended for the philosophically minded and for those whoalready possess some grounding in Shin Buddhism. As an interfaith dia-logue between Christian and Buddhist specialists of religion, this volumeaims at “demythologizing” and “reformulating” in more contemporaryterms some of the concepts at the heart of the “Pure Land” school, aschool that stresses the inability of individuals to attain enlightenmentthrough their own efforts and the necessity to entrust one’s awakeningto the active compassion of Amida Buddha by reciting his name.

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The assumption that underlies Toward a Contemporary Understanding ofPure Land Buddhism is the following: precisely because Shin Buddhismdoes not privilege a monastic practice, but specifically addresses itself tothe laity, it becomes important to demythologize the Pure Land path soas to test its current relevance for individuals living in a society very dif-ferent from the one in which Shinran (1173–1262) founded the tradition.

After a brief historical survey of Shin Buddhism and the kinds ofobstacles that have so far prevented “modernized” reformulations of itin the first section of the book, three Japanese contributors examinehow concepts such as the Pure Land, Amida Buddha, “self power” ver-sus “Other Power,” faith or shinjin can be understood in contemporaryterms. To explicate some of the important differences between theChristian and Pure Land frameworks of interpretation, Dennis Hirotachooses a hermeneutic approach to discuss the teleology and variousmodes of engagement with the Shin Buddhist path. The second contrib-utor, John Yokota, proposes to read Shin Buddhism through the inter-pretative grid of Western process philosophy, which offers a number ofintersections with the Buddhist conceptions of karma and emptiness. Thethird contributor, Musashi Tachikawa, illuminates the Pure Land traditionby highlighting the commonality of its dynamic with other Buddhist formsand practices, particularly the one of mandala contemplation found in eso-teric Buddhism. In a second section of the book, Gordon D. Kaufman andJohn B. Cobb, Jr., comment from a Christian point of view on the app-roaches of their Japanese colleagues. They also ask the latter for furtherclarification of their methodologies and of the possible points of intersec-tion/divergence that might exist between the Christian and Shin salvationprojects with regard to the problem of evil, the figures of Amida andChrist, and the status given to language and metaphysics. In turn, in thethird part of the book, Hirota, Yokota, and Tachikawa refine these issuesin their responses to their Christian colleagues.

Because of its very density, Toward a Contemporary Understanding ofPure Land Buddhism may not always demythologize the Pure Land tra-dition with equal clarity throughout its pages. However, if at times it pro-vides more questions than definitive answers, the volume deserves to beread on several counts: from an internal Buddhist perspective, it will cer-tainly allow practitioners of other schools to understand the specificityof their own paths better; within an interfaith framework, it raises vitalmethodological issues that need to be confronted by specialists whowish to avoid projecting their own conceptual grids onto that of a for-eign tradition. Last but not least, whatever one’s religious persuasion,Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhism embodies theprocess of religious thought in action, one that seeks to walk thetightrope between preservation and change which no faith that wants toremain alive can afford to ignore.

Franca Bellarsi, Université Libre de Bruxelles

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