On the Logic of "Shin-gyô" (信樂)

Shinran, one of the most outstanding figures in Japanese Jyôdokyô, (淨土敎), displayed a religious logic of his own. It is neither rationalistic nor socalled dialectic logic, but is religio-existential logic, the foundation of which we should find in the Buddhistic way of thinking. The originality of his logic is to be perceived in his initial work "Kyô-gyôshin-shô" (敎行信證) , especially in terms of the problem of "San-gan-ten-nyû" (三願轉入) . "San-gan-ten-nyû"designates the spiritual processes by means of which our spiritual life will be exalted to the ultimate religious stage. We've learned such a problem is studied in Hegel's "Phänomenologie des Geistes." "San-gan-ten-nyû" can be said to have the phenomenological construction in that it represents the processes in which the spirit will be exalted from the immediate stage to the ultimate stage. However, Hegel seems to understand this spiritual exaltation to be continuous and neglects the explanation on the moment of incontinuity of religious spirit. "San-gan-ten-nyû" is the way of grasping the exaltation of spirit logically in view of the moment of incontinuity, considering the processes of exaltation on the basis of the ultimate stage. This logic is remarkably characteristic as the Buddhistic logic, and here we want to distinguish the essence and the originality of Shinran's religious thinking through the study of this logic