JŌdo ShinshŪ
JŌDO SHINSHŪ. The Jōdo Shinshū, or True Pure Land sect, is a school of Japanese Buddhism that takes as its central religious message the assurance of salvation granted to all beings by the Buddha Amida (Skt., Amitābha). Its founder, Shinran (1173–1263), a disciple of the eminent Japanese monk Hōnen (1133–1212), founder of the Jōdoshū (Pure Land sect), stands in a line of Buddhist thinkers who emphasize faith in the salvific power of Amitābha and the hope of rebirth in his Pure Land, a paradisical realm created out of the boundless religious merit generated by Amitābha's fulfillment of a series of vows taken eons ago while still the bodhisattva Dharmākara. Jōdo Shinshū, or Shinshū as it is often called, is but one of a number of "Pure Land" traditions in East Asia, and is today the largest of the denominations of Japanese Buddhism.
Pure Land devotionalism is a perennial element in both Chinese and Japanese Buddhism. Beginning nominally with the visualization cult of Amitābha inaugurated in the year 403 by the Chinese monk Huiyuan, Pure Land practices have served as adjuncts to the teachings of a variety of East Asian Buddhist traditions and, from the sixth century, as the foundation of several religious movements devoted more or less exclusively to the worship of Amitābha.
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