The Promise of a Sacred World: Shinran’s Teaching of Other Power

Shinran (1173-1263) is one of the most important thinkers of Japanese Buddhist history and is regarded as the founder of its largest sect, the True Pure Land School (Jodo Shinshu). His teaching of ‘Other Power’ is a deep meditation on the place of human will and receptivity in spiritual practice and on the path towards liberation. Nagapriya gives a contemporary audience access to Shinran’s thirteenth-century religious perspective. He offers close readings of Shinran’s writings, places him in the context of his imagined Pure Land lineage, and brings alive Shinran’s perspective on ‘Other Power’ as embodied in the myth of Amida Buddha and the Pure Land scriptures. Stimulating greater interest in Shinran and ‘Other Power’, this book gives new ways to think about contemporary Buddhism.