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The Akunin Shōki Theme in Shin Buddhism of Japan J “The EVIL PERSON IS THE PRIMARY RECIPIENT OF THE Buddha’s compassion” THE AKUNIN Shōki THEME IN SHIN BUDDHISM OF JAPAN James C. Dobbins Among the various forms of Buddhism, Jōdo Shinshū 浄土真宗, or Shin Buddhism, in Japan has perhaps the most striking and unconventional doctrinal perspective on evil and wrongdoing. Instead of emphasizing the attainment of enlightenment through individual effort and self-perfection, it recognized the great difficulty humans have in following such a path because of their propensity to commit evil deeds. Founded by Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1262) in the thirteenth century, Shin Buddhism emphasized the compassionate workings of Amida 阿弥陀 Buddha to bring all living beings to enlightenment, rather than reliance on human effort to achieve enlightenment. In order to drive this message home, Shinran made a startling claim in his teachings, one that inverts Buddhism’s traditional recognition of the virtuous person over the evil one. In his akunin shōki 悪人正機 doctrine, Shinran identified the evil person as the primary tar- get of the Buddha’s efforts to deliver all livings beings to enlightenment and as a more likely candidate than the virtuous person to develop true faith (shin 信), which leads to enlightenment in Amida’s Pure Land. This paper will analyze and explicate the akunin shōki theme in Shin Buddhism and explore its significance in Japanese Buddhist history.1 Before I take up the akunin shōki concept itself, I would like to make a comment on the word “sin” as applied to this topic. As in the case of other forms of Buddhism, sin may be an inexact term to use to explain this idea of wrongdoing and evil. The reason is that Shin Buddhism rec- ognized karmic cause and effect as the matrix out of which wrongdoings arise and within which they must be negotiated. Actions—whether good, bad, or neutral and whether physical, verbal, or mental—arise from, pro- duce, and disappear as a result of causes and conditions. Human beings are thus considered the authors, beneficiaries, and victims of their own actions, since every act has an outcome, great or small, in this life or in 1 For a survey of Shin Buddhist history, see James C. Dobbins, Jōdo Shinshū: Shin Bud- dhism in Medieval Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002). 94 james c. dobbins future ones. Of course, in the context of Mahāyāna Buddhism in East Asia, there could be interventions on behalf of sentient beings by compassion- ate buddhas and bodhisattvas, but their efficacy was predicated on their immense store of karmic virtue and their transference of karmic merit to others, all within the framework of karmic cause and effect. Hence, if we use the word sin to refer to evil or wrongdoing in the Buddhist con- text, we must be careful to uncouple it from notions of original sin and forgiveness of sin in Western religions. There are other reasons too why sin is a problematic term to use in this case. Shin Buddhism, more than other types of Buddhism, has been likened to Christianity throughout the modern period. Amida Buddha is compared to God, Pure Land to heaven, Amida’s compassion to God’s forgiveness, Shin faith to Christian faith, and Shin wrongdoing to Christian sin. Sometimes it is difficult for Western- ers to conceptualize the themes and ideas of Shin Buddhism within their original Mahāyāna framework when the concept of sin is invoked. For that reason, I have opted to use such terms as evil and wrongdoing here instead of sin. Antecedents to Shinran: Evil as Seen in Earlier Buddhist Texts I would like to review cursorily the stock of Buddhist tropes, images, and themes that Shinran and Shin Buddhism inherited from earlier texts, which they used to formulate their ideas about the evil person. Evil, while not as pivotal a concept in Buddhism as sin is in Christianity, has none- theless been a frequent and persistent topic in Buddhist literature. In his writings Shinran drew from a wide array of Buddhist sūtras and treatises as proof texts of his ideas. Without digressing too broadly, I would like to highlight at least a few items from the three Pure Land sūtras and from the Mahāyāna version of the Nirvāṇa Sūtra that served as starting points for Shinran’s thinking. Because the primary concern from the Shin Bud- dhist perspective was with habitual or entrenched wrongdoing, Shinran tended to invoke the most radical examples of evil in Buddhist lore. Thus, we find an array of terms cited from the sūtras that represent Buddhism’s extreme notions of wrongdoing, and also accounts of the greatest villains in Buddhist history and legend. The most common expressions indicating wrongdoing or evil that Shin- ran borrowed from Buddhist texts were the ten evil acts ( jūaku 十悪), the five grave offenses (gogyaku 五逆), and the denigration of the Dharma .
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