Jodo Shinshu or the "True Pure Land School" has its roots in the teachings of Shinran Shonin, a 12th Century priest who left the monastery due to an acute awareness of his own limitations.
Shinran applied the same critical eye to the institutional Buddhism of the time and concluded that women, warriors, the illiterate, the poor, the deeply troubled, were all particularly well suited for liberation from suffering through the natural working of absolute compassion.
Stripped of his Buddhist rank due to pressure from the religious establishment, Shinran was exiled to a remote area where he married, experienced life outside of the capital and its monasteries and began a long career of study and teaching.
Shinran saw his wife, Eshinni, as a manifestation of the active principle of compassion. Their youngest daughter, Kakushinni, founded the lineage of Jodo Shinshu that has come down to us today.
