SHINRAN (1173–1262) was the founder of the Jōdo Shinshu, or True Pure Land school, of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Born in Japan during a period of social turmoil and religious change, Shinran became a Tendai monk at age nine and followed that discipline on Mount Hiei. At age twenty-nine, moved by a deep spiritual disquiet, he meditated for one hundred days in the Rokkakudō Temple in Kyoto, where he had a vision that led him to become a disciple of the Pure Land teacher Hōnen in 1201. He later received Hōnen's permission to copy his central work, the Senchaku hongan nembutsu shū (Treatise on the Nembutsu of the select primal vow), and to make a portrait of the master. Because of strong criticism voiced by the monks of Mount Hiei and Kōfukuji in Nara and the indiscretions of certain of his disciples, Hōnen and his...