Notes on the Americanization of Jiido Shinshii Buddhism: Urgency, Adaptation, and Existential Relevance in America, 1986 and Beyond
Notes on the Americanization of Jiido Shinshii Buddhism: Urgency, Adaptation, and Existential Relevance in America, 1986 and Beyond by Tetsuo Unno PREFACE ''Buddhism is a doctrine of salvation" (italics are Conze's).3 And Professor Frederick Streng oets are the divine messengers of the inward affirms that "Nagarjuna's articulation (of the P soul. Therefore, theirs are the words I borrow Mlidhyamika philosophy) is more than a set of here to invoke the American soul: its spirit, its propositions; it is the articulation of a vision darkened terrain, its unconsciousness. which seeks to release human beings from suffer· ing; i.e., to save them" (italics are mine).4 Even "Midway in our life's journey,/I went astray / the Zen Master Dogen expounds, "Forgetting from the straight road and woke to fmd myself/ body and mind, by placing them together in alone in a dark wood" (Dante). "Dark, dark my Buddha's hands and letting him lead you on, you light, and darker my desire" (Roethke). "Things will without design or effort gain freedom, attain fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy Buddhahood. ,,5 is loosed upon the world,/The blood·dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of inno· Jodo Shinshu's efforts to adapt itself to its cence is drowned;/ . .. /Surely some revelation is American setting must be viewed in this light. at hand" (yeats), "Oh, Mary,/GenUe Mother/ That is, its spread, or increase in followers, is open the door and let me in./ ... /1 have been secondary. The ultimate reason Jodo Shinshii born many times, a false Messiah,/but let me born must make itself accessible to America is that again/into something true" (Sexton).
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