Rev. Dr. Taitetsu Unno (1929–2014) was an American Buddhist scholar. He was one of America’s leading authorities on Pure Land Buddhism, as developed by Honen and Shinran in thirteenth-century Japan.
Born in the Shojoji temple in Kokura, in Kita-Kyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, Unno immigrated to America in 1935. During World War II, his family was put into internment camps at Rohwer, Arkansas, and Tule Lake, California.
After the war, Unno’s family settled in California. He graduated from the University of California-Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. With encouragement from the Japanese Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki, Unno received his M.A. and PhD in Buddhist Studies at Tokyo University in 1968.
Unno taught Buddhism and Japanese aesthetics at Smith College 1971–98. He was an ordained Shin Buddhist minister and the founder and Sensei of the Northampton Shin Buddhist Sangha. His publications include Tannisho: A Shin Buddhist Classic (1996,) River of Fire, River of Water (1998,) and Shin Buddhism: Bits of Rubble Turn into Gold (2002.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Taitetsu Unno
Spiritual awakening does not depend initially on who we are or what we do; rather it is becoming attuned to the working of great compassion at the heart of existence.
—Taitetsu Unno
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