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...