親鸞=Shinran; 聖典觀=Concept of canon; 機教相應=accordance between people and time; 金口相承=The tradition coming from Tathagata Shakyamuni's golden mouth; 歷史的自覺=The awakening of history
This paper deals with Shinran's Concept of Canon by means of investigating his representative book, namely "The Kyogyoshinsho（《教行信証》）", in which Shinran gave every effort to pursue the "true teaching". The formation and compilation of Buddhist canon had undergone a long history. Buddhist sutras or doctrines in India were validated by "three marks of the law" to gain their legitimacy. New theories were developed to sort various divisions of teaching or doctrine in China. The judgment among teachings evolved further in medieval Japanese Buddhism. The word of "select" has become the main ideology of judging various teachings from Honen, the founder of Japan Pureland School. And Honen selected the Dhyana sutra as the dominant sutra. Although Shinran felt like to carry on the will of his teacher Honen, he made a differenTchoice that he selected the Large Sukhavati sutra as the teaching supreme and true. Shinran described the absoluteness of the Sukhavati sutra within two volumes. Volume one（〈教卷〉）expounds the true teaching basing on the historical lineage and emphasizes that the sutra came directly from Tathagata Shakyamuni. Volume six （〈化身土卷〉）resulted from the experience of Shinran himself. Dhyana sutra and Large Sukhavati sutra regarded as two systems were integrated as a whole in the sixth, the last volume. Shinran’s "select" rooted apparently in the conventional principle of Pureland-Buddhism. Through the dialectical relationship of potentiality/teaching or history/eternity, the truth of Large Sukhavati sutra is justified and the meaning of historicity of Shakyamuni is expounded as well. To describe Shinran's pursuing and comprehending the true teaching, it would be applicable to adopt Kiyoshi Miki's words: "the awakening of history". Nevertheless, history in this context has nothing to do with physical time but all about subjectivity, namely the "eternal present" or "primordial time" for the stance of religious human begins. With such understanding, Shinran's assertion that all the canons of Pureland- Buddhism directly came from the preaching of Tathagata Shakyamuni himself would be understandable.
