Jōdo Shū Dharma

This document is built around the writings of the Jōdo-shū Research Institute on Pure Land Buddhism, Master Hōnen and Jōdo-shū. In the 90s and early 2000s, this Institute, under chairman Zenno Ishigami, operated an English website (http://www.jsri.jp/English/). This website contained many English language essays and studies. As of now that site is only accessible through the Internet Archive. Some of the links are not easily accessible. This is unfortunate because a lot of the content on this site was of high quality and very informative. As there is a dearth of research on the Jōdo-shū in English, it remains a great English language resource. As such, I compiled all the main pages I could find into a single document for posterity and ease of reading.

This document began as my own personal project to compile all JSRI pages in a single PDF. But over time it grew further to include some other writings and translations from other (non-JSRI) sources which were accessible on various websites associated with Jodo-shu or enhanced this document's coverage of Jōdo Shū teachings. I expanded the doc with some of these non-JSRI sources for my own use; they were not part of the original JSRI website. Therefore, this document is a hybrid which includes all the original JSRI content along with other Jodo-shu content that is currently scattered across the web, content which enhances the original JSRI articles.

For example, the original JSRI narrative of Honen's life did not discuss the famous and important visionary encounter with Shandao, so I added a short essay from another Jodo Shu source on this. Another example: several writings and quotations of Honen's disciples were extracted from Plain Words on the Pure Land Way (Hirota) to enhance the JSRI essays on them.

Further, for aesthetic reasons, I have also included some of the images that were used on the old website, along with many new images (mostly from Wikipedia and Google Image searches).

I also organized the document into the following main sections:

• On Pure Land Buddhism - Provides JSRI's original overview of the main texts, doctrines and lineage of Pure Land Buddhism

• Life of Hōnen Shōnin - Contains JSRI's original biography of Hōnen with many traditional illustrations. I have also added several new passages and images to this from other sources that enhance the narrative.
  
  

• Writings of Hōnen Shōnin - Contains the text from the JSRI pages on key writings of Hōnen as well as several translations of essential short texts, including: One Sheet Testament (Ichimai Kishomon), Isshi Koshōsoku, and Reply to Lady Kujo.

• Teachings of Hōnen Shōnin - Contains JSRI's "teachings" sections, which include numerous essays on the main ideas taught by Hōnen, along with various key papers on Hōnen's teachings that were hosted on the site.
  
  

• Jōdo Buddhism after Hōnen Shōnin - Contains the original essays from the JSRI that discuss the history of the Jōdo School after Hōnen's passing, including overviews of Hōnen's main disciples. Some passages and extracts from non-JSRI sources have also been added here, mainly short translations of the sayings of some of Honen's key disciples gleaned from other online sources.
  
  

Seeing as there is not that much Jodo Shu content out there, I thought I should share this PDF here as I have uploaded it on the Internet Archive.