This site is about Jodo Shinshu (sometimes called Shin Buddhism in the West) in the light of Traditionalist or Perennial philosophy as enunciated originally by René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy and Frithjof Schuon, and currently by many renowned Western academics.*

Jodo Shinshu is the largest Buddhist denomination in Japan, and its continental root-tradition, Pure Land Buddhism, is the most popular form of the dominant Mahayana Buddhism from Tibet throughout East Asia.

The Traditionalist or Perennial school has as its central principle the idea that all orthodox traditions are paths that lead to the same summit and are all saying fundamentally the same thing, albeit in very different “spiritual languages”.

The great World Traditions are divided into those that are fundamentally “ethnic” and those that are Universal, having separated themselves from the laws and ecology of a particular group to present a path for the whole of humanity.

The ethnic traditions are tied to the fundamental laws and social ecology of a particular section of humanity. Examples are Hinduism, Taoism, and the various Shamanist traditions from Siberia to the Americas.

While in some cases, these traditions have sought to proselytize by presenting themselves in semi-Westernized form to Western people, there is doubt as to whether they are truly effective outside the ethnic, spiritual and social ecology within which they truly have their being.

This is the reason that so many Traditionalist thinkers, beginning with Guénon and Schuon and extending to the majority of modern Traditionalist scholars, attach themselves to Islam rather than to the Hindu Vedantic philosophy that provides the fundamental underpinning of their beliefs.

Of the Universal Traditions that open a path for humanity as a whole, only three exist. These are Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism, which means that if one feels no affinity or spiritual linkage (in Japanese, ご縁　go-en) with the Abrahamic Tradition, only Buddhism is left open.

This may seem a little disconcerting, especially in view of the way that Buddhism is presented and generally understood in the West. This is usually an over-rationalistic and excessively de-mythologizing presentation made to appeal to the prejudices of the “scientific world-outlook”.

If this appeal makes one of the great Traditions available to people who would otherwise be closed to “religion”, of course that is a very good thing because it allows more beings to be freed from the samsara.

However, such a stripped-down view of Buddhism is likely to be unappealing to people starting out from a Traditionalist position.

Now, there is a certain truth to this somewhat flat world-view attributed to Buddhism.

Frithjof Schuon says of both Christianity and Buddhism:

These doctrines never consider the here-below as a positive support for a spiritual path, but reject it as an obstacle, which is to say that they consider it not in relation to its symbolism, which connects all things essentially, qualitatively or vertically to the divine Prototype, but solely in relation to its characters of manifestation, creation, hence on non-divinity, imperfection, corruptibility, suffering and death.

Schuon, Treasures of Buddhism, p. 96

The thing we need to understand about the Universal Traditions is that they are in a certain sense emergency measures. Ancient as they may seem to us, traditional philosophy tells us that the time in which these Universal Traditions were born was nearing the latter end of the four world ages – the age of iron in the Western Tradition or Kali Yuga in the Indian Tradition.

The very fact that for large segments of humanity their own Traditions were so atrophied that they needed to import foreign Traditions to replace them shows how far the original Spiritually oriented nature of human life and society had fallen by this time.

Humanity was, and is, in need of rescue. Buddhism depicts this world (meaning in fact the entirety of the samsara) as a burning house from which we need to escape.

The historical Buddha explicitly put aside all questions such as those regarding the origin of the universe, the question of a creator god, etc. in order to concentrate on the one thing needful: salvation from the samsara.

Christianity, despite its very different perspective, has a similar “emergency” character. The saving of beings from Hell is equivalent to the equally urgent saving of beings from falling back into endless aeons of samsara. The spiritual language is very different but the underlying reality is the same.

However, having said all this, every Tradition contains the whole of Tradition. The reintroduction of Platonism into Christianity as early as St. Augustine or even St. John the Apostle; the reintroduction of non-dualism and a multi-faceted universe of many Buddhas into the Mahayana indicate that even an emergency perspective does not suppress acceptance of the fullness of Tradition.

Wherever Tradition exists at all, Tradition in its richness and entirety will always be present, for Tradition is whole and indivisible.

Understanding this may make Buddhism – especially Pure Land Buddhism – more warm and accessible to people who approach it from the perspective of the Perennial Tradition.

Also, Jodo Shinshu is a religion for “ordinary people” – a tariki or Other-Power tradition.

Most of the great writers and scholars of the Perennial/Traditionalist movement, starting with the founder, Guénon, have gravitated toward severely ascetic initiatory paths of jiriki (Self-Power) Realization, the majority within Islamic initiatic organizations; a substantial minority (probably the largest after Islam) in the ascetic Hesychast traditions of Mount Athos in the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church.

For those who are intellectually attracted to Traditionalism / Perennialism and have no affinity with the Abrahamic religions, and who furthermore are not suited to intense ascetic practice, the “easy path” of Jodo Shinshu is ideally suited.

Please see this article: The “Easy Path”: A Way for “ordinary people”.

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*Such as Titus Burckhardt, Huston Smith, William Chittick, Harry Oldmeadow, James Cutsinger and Seyyed Hossein Nasr