Hōnen Shōnin (Genku)
1133-1212 · East Asian Buddhism · Little-known
Honen was a Japanese monk who trained on Mount Hiei and came down convinced the old monastic disciplines had stopped working. The world had entered mappo, an age too degenerate for most people to save themselves by their own effort, so he founded Japan's Pure Land school on a single practice: recite the nembutsu, Amida Buddha's name, in trust, and Amida's own vow carries you the rest of the way.
Signature
The position Honen is most identified with in the Profiler:
- The Divine
- leans Describable
- Theology
- Henotheism
Positions on the 4 axes the sources answer
- The Divine
- leans Describable (25 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Identity
- leans Changing (75 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
16 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Honen refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Henotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Karmic Balance
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Final Liberation
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Knowledge
- Tradition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Agency
- Synergism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Cyclical Recurrence
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Eschatological / Ancestral Time
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Divine Revelation / Sacred Tradition
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Death
- Unconditional Salvation / Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Irredeemably Corrupted
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?