Hōnen 法然 (Chōshō 2 / 1133-05-13 (NS) → Kenryaku 2 / 1212-02-29 (NS)), Late-Heian → early-Kamakura Japanese Buddhist master, the founder of the Jōdoshū 浄土宗 (Pure Land school) of Japanese Buddhism. Lay surname Uruma 漆間; lay name Seishimaru 勢至丸. Dharma-name Genkū 源空; common appellation Hōnen 法然 (“Dharma-Naturalness”); often combined as Hōnenbō Genkū 法然房源空. Posthumous titles: Enkō Daishi 圓光大師 (conferred Genroku 10 / 1697 by Emperor Higashiyama, the first of seven imperial titles bestowed on him at fifty-year intervals through to Hōkyū Daishi 法救大師 conferred 2011 by Emperor Akihito on the 800th memorial). Native of Kume-no-Mio 久米之美保 in Mimasaka 美作 province (modern Okayama).
Tonsured at age 9 (1141) at the local Bodaiji on the death of his father; entered Hieizan 比叡山 at age 13 (1145) and trained in the Tendai-school under Ko’on Genkō 皇圓 and Eikū 叡空. After many years of canonical and contemplative training, in Shōan 5 / 1175 at age 43, he had a transformative reading of the Guān Wúliángshòu jīng shū 觀無量壽經疏 (the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra) of the Tang-dynasty master Shàndǎo 善導 (613–681), specifically the passage “Single-mindedly, exclusively, hold the name of Amitābha” (一心専念彌陀名號) — and immediately abandoned conventional Tendai-school praxis for the single-practice nenbutsu (senju nenbutsu 専修念佛). He left Hieizan and settled at Yoshimizu 吉水 in Kyoto, attracting a substantial lay and monastic following.
In Kenkyū 9 / 1198 at age 65, at the request of the regent Kujō Kanezane 九条兼実 (1149–1207), he composed the Senchaku hongan nenbutsu shū 選擇本願念佛集 (the present text KR6t0314) — the foundational doctrinal text of Jōdoshū. The exclusive-nenbutsu doctrine soon attracted opposition from the Hieizan and Kōfuku-ji establishments; in Kennin 4 / 1204 he authorised the Shichikajō kishōmon 七箇條起請文 (“Seven-Article Pledge”), an attempt to discipline his more excessive disciples; in Genkyū 1 / 1205 Kōfuku-ji petitioned the court to suppress the senju nenbutsu movement; and in Kennin 1 / 1207 the court banned the senju-nenbutsu and exiled Hōnen to Tosa 土佐 (later commuted to Sanuki 讃岐). In Kenryaku 1 / 1211 he was recalled to Kyoto and died at his Otani 大谷 residence in early 1212.
Principal disciples include 良忠 Ryōchū (1199–1287, third Chinzei-line patriarch), Shōkū 證空 (1177–1247, founder of the Seizan branch), Kakushin 覺信 (Hōnen’s kanshi — chief lay-attendant), and most consequentially Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1263, the founder of Jōdoshinshū 浄土真宗 — the True Pure Land school, which became Japan’s largest Buddhist denomination by membership). Hōnen is one of the two or three most consequential single religious thinkers in pre-modern Japan: through his disciple Shinran (and the Jōdoshinshū) and through his own Jōdoshū direct lineage (through Ryōchū and the Chinzei-line), Hōnen’s exclusive-nenbutsu doctrine became the doctrinal foundation of by far the largest single segment of Japanese Buddhism.
Wikidata Q347076.