Background
Hōnen was born on 13 May 1133 in Mimisaka. He was the son of Uruma no Tokikuni, the dryoslii (military governor) of the region.
Hōnen was born on 13 May 1133 in Mimisaka. He was the son of Uruma no Tokikuni, the dryoslii (military governor) of the region.
His father was killed in a quarrel in 1141, whereupon he entered the priesthood, becoming a disciple of Kangaku of a local temple called Bodai-ji. In 1145 (or possibly 1147) he entered the monastery on Mt. Hiei and studied Tendai doctrine under Genko and Koen. Discouraged by the corrupt state into which Buddhism had fallen, he went into retirement at Kurodani on Mt. Hiei in 1150, where he studied the rules for monastic discipline and the Pure Land teachings of the Tendai sect under Eiku.
In 1175 he read the commentary on the Kuan-wu-liang-shou-ching (Kammuryoju-kyo; one of the three Pure Land sutras, containing an account of the Buddha Amida and the glories of his Paradise) by Shan-tao (631-81), a celebrated monk of T'ang China, and became convinced that it was possible to attain rebirth in Paradise merely by the repetition of the invocation of Amida (Namu Amida Butsu).
He left Mt. Hiei the same year and lived for a time at Hirotani west of Kyoto, later moving to Otani on Higashiyama, the site presently occupied by Chion-in. In 1186 he expounded his doctrines to a group of eminent monks of various sects of Buddhism at Ohara, and from 1189 on was very active in spreading his teachings, often calling on the courtier Kujo Kanezane.
In 1207 the practice of the nembutsu, the invocation of Amida, veas banned, and Honen was banished to Shikoku. He was pardoned the same year and stayed at Kachio-dcra in Settsu. He returned to Kyoto in 1211, where a disciple set down on paper his famous Ichimai kishomon, containing the essence of the Pure Land teachings. He died the following year.
His thought was based upon the traditional Pure Land teachings of Tendai, which stress that all living beings are in fact Buddhas and that the present world is none other than the Pure Land of enlightenment. In Tendai, the nembutsu was only one of a number of religious practices to be observed, and consisted of a difficult form of meditation in which one visualized the Buddha in one’s mind. Honen, however, interpreted the Pure Land as a separate realm in which one is reborn after death. He taught that the invocation of the name of Amida alone was all that was needed to insure such rebirth, thus greatly simplifying the religious practices required of the believer.
His thinking was colored by the belief that the world had entered the period of mnppo or "the latter days of the Buddhist Law,” when individuals could no longer hope to achieve enlightenment by their own efforts. At the same time, he worked vigorously to take Buddhism out of the hands of the clergy and aristocrats and to establish it as a means of salvation for the people as a whole. That is why the new sect that he established grew with such speed and why it was so vigorously opposed by the older sects of Buddhism and the court. His writings and sayings are collected and preserved in Saiho shinan- sho and Kurodani shonin goto-roku. His disciples included such eminent figures as Shoku, Shoko, and Shinran.
The present-day Jodo sect derives from the teaching line of Shoko.