Genshin's Ōjōyōshū and the Construction of Pure Land Discourse in Heian Japan. By Robert F. Rhodes. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017. 404 pages. Paperback: ISBN-13: 978-0-8248-7928-0.
摘要
The Ōjōyōshū 往生要集 is one of the most important books in the history of Japanese Buddhism, not only due to the breadth and depth of its content, but because of its impact and influence on Japanese religion in practice. Rhodes's study is a must read for scholars of Japanese religion, but also scholars and practitioners of Buddhism broadly, as well as those interested in the comparative study of soteriological systems. Indeed, many treatises were written by the Buddhist scholiasts of Mt. Hiei 比叡 and other major monastic centers, but most of those erudite works remained on the mountain, as it were. The Ōjōyōshū was actually read and used to inform Buddhist practice, and its author, Genshin 源信 (942–1017), apparently served as the model for a virtuous monk that appears in the Tale of Genji, the world's first novel and arguably the most impor- tant work of Japanese literature. One of the most important contributions of this study is its sustained engagement with Genshin in his own intellectual context. The study of Genshin is generally conducted from the perspective of contemporary understandings of his teachings with centuries of doctrinal precedence for how Genshin ought to be understood. Rhodes explicitly addresses the shortcomings of that approach, and other important issues, so as to contextualize Genshin's thought in the broader context of the development of Mahayana thought as well as the particular context of the unique Japanese approach to the Pure Land tradition.
