Shin Buddhism responded very directly to the problem of inevitable and thoroughgoing complicity. Unlike the more traditional Buddhists Dogen and Honen — two closely related teachers — Shinran was never able to shake the sense that he was, from the start, unable to fulfill the duties and ideals of monastic life; he was simply too botched. In the past, salvation might have been achieved by good works or karmic progress, but, according to the Buddhist cosmology to which Shinran adhered, this time was long gone. It is precisely where he failed, however, that he succeeded as a teacher. The pain of self-understanding (that he wasn’t suited for the priesthood) passed seamlessly into self-critique, and, ultimately, into a form of confession that remains unique in Buddhist teaching today. His suggestion is clear: Salvation may turn on pure faith, but sincere faith turns on the constant acknowledgment of unavoidable imperfection.

Shinran writes: “Each of us in outward bearing makes a show of being wise, good, and dedicated. But so great are our greed, anger, perversity and conceit that we are filled with all forms of malice and cunning.” This is the sort of admission that many spiritual seekers (and, for that matter, angry, self-righteous moralists or politicians) don’t want to hear. It suggests that there is no transcendent escape, that, in Shinran’s words “hell is my permanent abode, my house.” To be clear, this admission is not spoken from a place of despair or a certain type of quietism; it is, instead, a brave realism about the human condition that is cleareyed about the realities of moral and spiritual development.

Alexis Shotwell, a Canadian sociologist and philosopher whose recent book “Against Purity” resonates with strains of Jodo Shinshu, writes that “what’s needed, instead of a pretense to purity that is impossible in the actually existing world, is something else. We need to shape better practices of responsibility and memory for our placement in relation to the past, our implication in the present and our potential creation of different futures.” Aiming for individual purity, Shotwell says, echoing the ancient sage, is counterproductive. When we do, he argues, we become solipsistic, narcissistic and self-focused.

When one bathes, or meditates, or hikes, or works out, or eats — one typically does so, at least in the West, by oneself. It is my naturally harvested luffa sponge, my thoughts to control and my mind to clear, my $300 Alpine boots, my home gym, my cucumber on sprouted bread sandwich, my quest for perfection. And decidedly not yours. Part of the problem, Shinran believes, is that each of us actually think we know the way to purity and enlightenment. Each of us thinks we can get there by ourselves. He is quite clear on this point: we don’t have a clue how to achieve salvation. “I know nothing at all of good and evil,” Shinran admits, “ … with a foolish being full of blind passions — in this burning house — all matters without exception are empty and false.”

This is what Western philosophers term “epistemic humility” — a deep Socratic sense that one knows that he or she doesn’t know. For Shinran, this is a pivotal form of spiritual prostration — a laying low of the last vestiges of selfhood. Everything in human existence is equally meaningful or meaningless, take your pick.

In being “against purity” — in knowing “nothing at all about good and evil” — Shinran also stood against the standard way that most Buddhists of his day understood themselves and enlightenment. He was neither a monk, nor a layperson, and didn’t fit in anywhere. Traditional teachers called him a fool or a heretic, and upon being exiled to the remote province of Echigo, Shinran embraced his outsider status, assuming the name Gutoku — “the stubble-faced idiot.” There are stubble-faced idiots who don’t know they are stubble-faced idiots, and there are those who do. These idiots — the ones with self-knowledge, like Shinran — might be better equipped to mitigate the effects of their idiocy.