Shinnyo-en
Headline text
Shinnyo En is a form of Buddhism established in Japan. It is a sub-school of Vajrayana, which is the esoteric branch of Mahayana Buddhism. There are three major forms of esoteric Buddhism in Japan, including Shingon, Tendai, and Shinnyo En. Shinnyo En is unique in that it has sesshin meditation training, powers of bakku daiju, and is the form of esoteric practice that is open to lay practitioners. Shingon and Tendai teachings are ultimately only available for practice by monks, whereas Shinnyo En practice is open to all.
The Founder, Shinjo Ito, was an aircraft engineer in pre-war Japan, before he resigned his career in 1936, and he and his wife dedicated their lives to religious pursuit. Shinnyo En has temples and meeting places in many countries. In the United States, temples are located in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, and New York. The temple in Chicago is the largest Buddhist temple in the United States.
Shinnyo En is translated to mean "garden of truth," or "garden of Tathata." Tathata is a fundamental concept in Mahayana philosophy and is interpreted as the true nature of all phenomena or as the original state of things.
Shinnyo En is based on the Nirvana Sutra (Mahaparinirvana Sutra is the long name) which is the final Buddhist sutra. Other Buddhist sutras also have a place in Shinnyo En, but the Nirvana sutra is the most prominent.
External link
Shinnyo En- The Three Treasures
The teaching of Shinnyo En is characterized by three treasures unified as one source of power to liberate the spirits of all the sentient beings from the sufferings of their karmic boundaries. Each sentient being including a human must suffer from his or her own problems. What kind of problems each being must suffer from is varied depending upon the karmic inheritance from his or her ancestors as well as from his or her own accumulated deeds. The unified power of the three treasures of Shinnyo Teaching is believed to blow all the negative karmic elements away and lead each spirit to the total spiritual freedom of Permanent Bliss, Permanent Delight, Permanent Self and Permanent Purity.
The three treasures are 1: The stream of Law 2: Shinnyo Spiritual Faculty 3: The Great Nirvana Sutra.
1: The stream of law. : The founder of Shinnyo Teaching, Shinjo Ito, through extremely austere and severe trainings of Shingon Esoteric Buddhism(Daigo-School), inherited the spiritual stream of Maha Acharya, which means the one who has inherited the Spirit of Buddha. Maha Acharya is, according to the tradition of Esoteric Buddhism, the one whose spirit is unified with the sacred stream of the Great Spirit of Maha Virochana (The Buddha that represents all the sources of things and lives in the whole universe as well as the universe itself.). It’s also taught in the tradition of Esoteric Buddhism that Maha Acharya is the one who is allowed to establish a new school of Buddhism. The Buddhist Order, Shinnyo En is the body that propagates spiritual teachings of Buddha, which was established by Shinjo Ito with the absolute credential as Maha Acharya.
2: Shinnyo Spiritual Faculty : Shinnyo Spiritual Faculty which has been completed with the absolute unification of the spiritual power of Earth having been inherited to Shojushin-in(Shinjo Ito’s wife, Tomoji) and the spiritual power of Heaven having been inherited to Shinjo-Ito(The founder of the teaching) refers to the special psychic power that the followers of Shinnyo Teaching are able to acquire through a long time of altruistic practices and spiritual trainings. It’d be impossible for the followers to purify their spiritual entities without Shinnyo Spiritual Faculty.
This spiritual power can be rephrased as Buddha’s Wisdom. Sesshin Training which is unique to Shinnyo Teaching is the extremely precious chance for the people suffering from negative karmic influences to touch the sacred spirit of Buddha. The followers of Shinnyo Teaching are always encouraged to lead their lives based on what they have realized through Sesshin Trainings. And through such efforts they make, they acquire the true happiness and wisdom of Buddha’s Enlightenment.
3: The Great Nirvana Sutra.: The Great Nirvana Sutra is the ultimate completion of Mahayana Wisdom. This sutra is composed of 25 Chapters and each chapter clarifies the most profound conclusions of all the Mahayana teachings having been taught beforehand.
The four sacred principles are clearly taught in this sutra. They are
1: Jo, Raku, Ga, Jo, ( The Eternity of Buddha’s Spirit, The Absolute Spiritual Comfort liberated from karmic chains, The True Pure Self, The absolute Purity and Clarity of the Spirit)
2: Nyorai Joju: The eternity and omnipresence of Tathagata
3: Sendai-jobutsu: The Eternity and the unbreakability of Buddha Nature at the core of every sentient being
4: The omnipresence of Buddha Nature.(Every single thing, whether it’s a living thing or not, has the seed (Buddha Nature) which is to grow to be the spirit of Buddha).
Shinnyo Teaching would have to lose its meaning of existence if it lacked any one of these three treasures.
A deeper deliberation over the power of spiritual salvation manifested in The Teachings of Shinnyo En
The articles under the following titles have been deleted and this writing itself will also be deleted in 3 days. I asked for advice from my lineage parent and the advice I received was that they should be deleted because they were too detailed for them to be publicized. I now know that there are things that should be publicized and shouldn’t be publicized even if they are all true. Here I could know that Shinnyo Teaching is a school of esoteric Buddhism some details of which have to be limited only to the transmission from a person to a person both of whom follow the Teaching sincerely. Buddha's teachings are to be taught properly according to the degrees of the individual's capability to understand what are being taught. That's one of the most crucial principles that the followers of Mahayana teachings must keep in mind, which I forgot when writing the deleted articles. Writing something and just posting it was an irresponsible deed that has nothing to do with the practicing of the Teaching even though what is written is the very truth, because there is no need for synpathy to the person who reads it. Teaching of Shinnyo En, except for some basic facts, always has to be told from a person to a person with an intense desire to save him or her from their troubles.
I wrote the deleted articles because something urged me to do so after reading the articles of Shinnyo En in Wiki Pedia of Japanese version. They were written by someone outside of the Teaching with obvious ill intention under the pretension of ‘the objective opinion of a third person’ . They were written in the way to deliberately mix facts with vulgar lies of third and forth rate tabloid-like magazines. It’s the method that is used in frauds to the effect that the readers get confused and believe what is written there to be true. I got upset and I wrote as much truth as I know about Shinnyo Teaching because I felt someone must do that before someone else with an evil intention does that in this public information page of Wiki Pedia. Maybe that was the force that made me go too much far. I wrote them as I didn’t want anyone who may read the articles in the future to lose the precious chance of being saved from various sufferings caused by negative karma.
<Correction> For those who read the deleted articles, the name 'Ohdo Nakamura' in the article of 'The relationship of The Three Treasures and Bakku Daiju' should have been 'Ohdo Nakamaru'. I'm sorry for this mistake.
I'm a Japanese follower of the 60 th. Division, Tokyo Japan.