Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will compare 親鸞 (1173-1263) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) to contribute to the development of comprehensive understanding on the Japanese intellectual history through grasping the difference and similarity about the key conceptions of both: 慈悲 (Jihi) and Love (amor, caritas).

Paper long abstract:

When began Japanese Philosophy? Japanese Philosophy appeared at the Meiji period not suddenly. Of course, by that time we had no concept of "Philosophy" under the context like in Western intellectual history. However it is unavoidable for us to look back at the background of Japanese intellectual history which is composed of Shintoism, Japanized Buddhism and the world of poetry Waka like 萬葉集（Manyōshū), when we try to understand modern Japanese Philosophy fundamentally. With these background Japanese leading thinker in Meiji era, e.g. Kyoto school, wrestled with the reception of Western Philosophy which consists of mainly Greek Philosophy and Christianity.

In this paper I will treat 親鸞 (Shinran, 1173-1263) who is the patriarch of 浄土真宗(Shin-Buddhism) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) who is Scholastic representative of Catholic to contribute to the development of comprehensive understanding on the Japanese intellectual history through grasping the difference and similarity. The Thinkers play the important role in the 13 Century in Japan and Europe. While they have similarities structure as "the salvation of religion", these two religions have difference way to the salvation. For the former it is important to rely on Hongan of Amida-Buddha and for the latter, to attain the trine God with love through integrating the desires. In other words, the key of the salvation is for Shinran absolute Other-Power and for Thomas Self-Power. I will compare Shinran's 慈悲 (Jihi) with Thomas's Love (amor, caritas) based on the interpretation of their texts.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the conception of time in Soga Ryōjin's works, showing how he employs a unique interpretation of a Yogācāra theory of time to argue that the salvific moment in Shin Buddhism contains both the results of all of past history and the potentiality for all of future time.

Paper long abstract:

Soga Ryōjin (1875-1971) is one of the most unique and influential modern interpreters of Shinran's thought. In his attempt to reassert Shinran's original grasp of the immediate nature of salvation (that is to say, salvation in the present that is not dependent on a future rebirth in a Pure Land), Soga often used concepts and conceptualizations from Yogācāra philosophy to interpret and explicate Shinran's ideas. In particular, Soga's grasp of time and his interpretation of the content of the "single thought moment of faith" (shin no ichinen 信の一念) set forth by Shinran are heavily informed by Yogācāra views of time. In one seminal work, where Soga maps concepts from Yogācāra thought regarding the ālayavijñāna onto Shinran's understanding of faith, he presents a view of time where the present instant is all-encompassing, holding within it the results of all history as well as all future potentiality. In this and other pieces, Soga intimates that time is nothing more than the directionality of the present instant, yet he conceives that directionality not as moving from past to future in the chronological sense, but instead as flowing from the indeterminate future, into the reality of the present, and away into a conditioning past.

This paper introduces Soga's unusual and non-intuitive view of time, presents the sources within the Yogācāra tradition that he drew on in developing this understanding, and considers the implications of his ideas for interpreting Shinran's soteriology. Soga's understanding of the present moment of awakening as being constantly opened up by future potentiality brings that instant out of timeless transcendence and allows space for the person of faith to be dynamically engaged with the world. In that sense, Soga's theory of time saves Shinran's Shin Buddhism from the problem of "other-worldliness" twice: first by pointing up the immediacy of salvation within the moment of faith, and then by bringing the salvific instant, which might be taken as transcendent of worldly concerns, into communication with the future, making it a fundamental element that shapes it.

Paper short abstract:

Philosopher Tanabe Hajime argues that Pure Land myth reveals a dialectical understanding of history. This paper explores how Tanabe builds on a temporal structure suggested by Soga Ryōjin, and considers the ethical and political significance of Tanabe's treatment of history in its post-war context.

Paper long abstract:

Modern Japanese thinkers interested in Pure Land have paid special attention to the way in which the Buddha at the center of the Pure Land imagination, Amida Buddha, is figured as infinite life and infinite light. This understanding of Amida in terms of infinity complicates the orthodox modern understanding of Amida and his Pure Land as located in the future, and offers an opening for using Pure Land thought as the basis for a philosophical interrogation of time. In this paper, I examine Tanabe Hajime's mobilization of Dharmākara Bodhisattva and Amida Buddha as figures for time and eternity. Tanabe draws upon Jōdo Shinshū thinker Soga Ryōjin's treatment of the three minds of faith, according to which sincere mind (or the mind that dwells on the past) and the mind wishing for birth (or the mind that dwells on the future) arise simultaneously within the bodhisattva's mind of serene faith, which dwells in an uninterrupted present; time, Soga asserts, is nothing other than the present, and consciousness of time is consciousness only of the single thought moment within which infinity unfolds itself. Tanabe takes up this analysis of the structure of time as the basis for his own analysis of the structure of history, arguing that within the circular or dialectical movement of history, time must pivot around an eternal present, within which every new becoming (or movement toward the future) is simultaneously a return to original being (or a return to the past). That this circularity can be discerned within the narrative of Dharmākara and Amida is, for Tanabe, a sign that Pure Land thought discloses the dialectical structure of history. After laying out how Tanabe expands upon Soga in developing his interpretation of the movement of history, I consider the political and ethical significance of Tanabe's theory of historical time as circular in the context of the historical moment at which he is developing this theory—at the end of the war and in the months following Japan's surrender, at a time when the meaning of the past and the shape of the future are open to re-examination.