Weekly Wasan - Episode 66 - Shōzōmatsu Wasan (Hymns of the Dharma-Ages) 110-114

Hi Dharma-friends,

In this episode we continue with 5 more verses of the Shōzōmatsu Wasan known as "Additional Hymns of Lament on the Term Hotoke." Hotoke commonly means "Buddha." According to the commentary found in The Collected Works of Shinran (CWS), "Probing into the origins of the term, Shinran traces it back to an early critic of Buddhism, Mononobe no Moriya (d. 587), who opposed its introduction into Japan. According to Shinran, Moriya applied the term, with the meaning "sick with fever," to a statue of Amida that was discovered in Naniwa Bay (present Osaka) and later enshrined in a temple known as Zenkō-ji. In using the term, Moriya implied that the foreign image was the cause of an epidemic. Although Shinran's etymology is not currently accepted by scholars of Japanese, his concern is that the use of the term leads to widespread disparagement of the teaching, and in his own writings, he avoids it." CWS, II, 101.

We're in the home stretch of our traversal of the Shōzōmatsu Wasan. Next time, we'll cover a prose section in this collection, "On Jinen Hōni." After that, our final episode will feature Shinran Shōnin's two powerful concluding verses.

Please be well! Check out more good Dharma content on the American Buddhist Study Centers home page, ambuddhist.org

Palms together, Gary