Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!

"And I cried to the Lord, saying why should I be thus, seeing I was never addicted to commit those evils? And the Lord answered that it was needful I should have a sense of all conditions, how else should I speak to all conditions; and in this I saw the infinite love of God. I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness."

-George Fox, founder of the Religious Society of Friends ("the Quakers"), from a journal dated to 1647 C.E.

"Thus, when one has boarded the ship of the Vow of great compassion and sailed out on the vast ocean of light, the winds of perfect virtue blow softly and the waves of evil are transformed. The darkness of ignorance is immediately broken through, and quickly reaching the land of immeasurable light, one realizes great nirvana."

-Shinran Shonin, founder Shin Buddhism, from The True Teaching, Practice and Realization of the Pure Land Way, dated to 1224 C.E.

Coming and goings

Nobel Peace Prize winner, champion of the the importance of the eminence of reverence for life, accomplished musician, theologian, physician, and ethicist, Albert Schweitzer, was born on this day in 1875. Shinran Shonin, disciple of Honen, the founder of the Japanese school of Pure Land Buddhism, died on this day 1262. While not seeking to establish his own sect, his interpretations and clarifications led to a new form of Japanese Pure Land most commonly known as Shin Buddhism. The Level 8th Buddhist has a post on this memorial and a link to a nice performance of Shinran’s hymn, the Shōshinge