3 - Computing in the Humanities and Social Sciences

model that “reproduces force lines, condenses events, makes everything smaller and
ciphered—but does not hide [that which it stands for]” (Cardona 1987: 188).
Appendix: Esoteric Nenbutsu As Gomitsu Practice
We have already mentioned the nenbutsu several times in this lecture. The Shingon
school developed a distinctive theory of nenbutsu that differed from the normative one
as it developed within the Tendai school first and the various Pure Land traditions later.
The Tendai priest Genshin (942-1017) was among the first in Japan to propose a
doctrinal systematization of nenbutsu. In his view, the invocation of the Buddha
Amida’s name was a minor, subsidiary practice to the meditation on Amida’s Pure
Land. More than a century later Hønen (1133-1212) launched an alternative
interpretation of the nenbutsu, which became an easy salvation practice for all. Shinran
(1173-1262) further developed Hønen’s formulations. According to them, and other
thinkers of the Pure Land tradition, the nenbutsu was neither a subsidiary practice, as
was argued by Genshin, nor a minor practice for the unlearned, as was the tenet of
many Buddhist schools. For them, on the contrary, the nenbutsu was the only effective
practice that could save the human beings living during the Final Age of the Dharma
(mappø). Hønen encouraged long chanting sessions involving one million repetitions of
Amida’s name. Shinran, in contrast, argued that the nenbutsu is not, properly speaking,
a religious practice aimed at the performer’s salvation. In Shinran’s radical view,
salvation is only possible thanks to Amida’s grace; the practitioner cannot lure him into
intervening on their behalf just because they engage in religious practice. In fact,
practices performed with this assumption are a certain way to be damned, sine they
assume righteousness on the part of the practitioner and a sort of power to control the
deity. For Shinran, the nenbutsu was just an act to express the practitioner’s
spontaneous and unconditioned gratitude toward Amida. By that as it may, in all of
these interpretations the nenbutsu is not configured, strictly speaking, as a mantric
practice. It is not part of an esoteric, non-ordinary language; it is not used in meditative
visualizations, except perhaps in Genshin’s case—who however only acknowledged it
as a support for meditation, not as a full-fledged subject of meditative activity; it is not
believed to have a salfivic power in itself—at most, it generates merit as any other
Buddhist practice; there is also an apparent lack of systematic investigation on the
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