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x x i i i Acknowledgments This book, like most things in our lives, could not have appeared without the contributions of others. Over the years, and in previously published volumes, I have indicated many persons who have worked with me in our joint efforts to understand the subject of humankind’s religiousness and of our own religious orientations. Among them, persons who have led me into the study of religious texts have my gratitude because, by doing so, I have been enabled to learn from others, particularly those who speak to us in different languages from the past, and consequently I have had the opportunity of hearing their voices as they have called me out of a tendency to be preoccupied by current assumptions of what it is to be genuinely human. At the same time, this grounding in the cumulative process of religious traditions has helped me to discern, however falteringly, the assumptions of religious men and women living around the globe today. I am grateful for persons who have taught me, in Texas, Kentucky, and Massachusetts, in England, Sri Lanka, and also in Japan, who have enabled me, at least to some degree, to understand some of our languages. Languages enable us to speak among ourselves; English, of course, becoming more and more dominant today. But it is the language of another person that is closest to his or her heart and it is through that language that one draws nearer to the fundamental basis of, foundation for self-disclosure in, another’s thought. When that is done, even approximated—even attempted as a person with my limited abilities might—one is called out from oneself and enters into an inter-penetrative intellectual process giving rise to an appropriation of concepts once thought peculiarly foreign, now found to be primarily human. For these language teachers, their knowledge and patience, I remain grateful. One of the pressing concerns for Buddhist men and women in the twenty-first century is to gain a more comprehensive and self-conscious understanding of their religious affirmations and the quality of personal faith both within the Buddhist tradition at-large and in the religious history of humankind x x iv I n t he C om p a ny of Fr ie nd s generally, including, of course, our global religious context today. This study explores dimensions of faith and understanding comparatively within the Buddhist tradition and also within the Christian. After graduating from a Southern Baptist university, in Texas, and seminary , in Kentucky, with primary focus on Western history and Christian studies —prior to the rise of fundamentalist paternalism that now dominates the seminary and, to some degree, continues to threaten the open inquiry of the university—I began my study of what were then called “non-Christian religions” at King’s College and the School of Oriental and African Studies, of the University of London, concentrating on the Buddhist tradition with a thesis on the Bodhisattva doctrine in early Indian Mahāyāna and subsequently launched a sustained study of the Theravāda during my doctoral work at Harvard. As is so often the case, one’s friendship with and respect for another colleague can be of lasting influence. I found this so with the late Minor Lee Rogers, formerly of Washington and Lee University, author, with Ann T. Rogers, of Rennyo: The Second Founder of Shin Buddhism—with a translation of his letters (“Nanzan Studies in Asian Religions,” Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1991). Recognizing in Minor Rogers an impressive commitment to the subject and an involvement with the issues of religious living as Jōdo Shinshū or Shin Buddhists have demonstrated in the past and today, I became interested, too, in pursuing studies in the Jōdo Shinshū tradition and among Shin Buddhists. Two decades ago I began working with Dennis Hirota, a scholar and translator of the first order, who with patience led me into the magnificent heritage and vision of Jōdo Shinshū. Too numerous are the significant works by Dennis Hirota on which I have relied in my studies for me to note here. My indebtedness to his guidance will become clear as we turn our attention to Jōdo Shinshū. One is deeply moved by one’s good fortune to have been able to work alongside men of such stature and insight. I have learned enormously from Buddhist men and women, particularly in Sri Lanka and in Japan. Their faithfulness to their religious heritage, to the...

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