When I was studying Japanese in the languages, literatures, and cultures department at UMass Amherst in the early 2010s, I became enamored of a now-obscure school of medieval Japanese Buddhism called Ji-shū, the Time School. Ji Buddhism was in most respects within the mainstream of Pure Land Buddhist thought, whose characteristic features include the belief that final enlightenment in the present world is no longer possible and the best course of action is to pray to a cosmic buddha called Amida for a rebirth in his Pure Land, a universe in which practicing the dharma is easier. Pure Land is the most widespread and popular type of Buddhism in Japan but has historically not been appealing to Western converts. Where Ji and its founding figure, an itinerant monk called Ippen Shōnin, parted company with mainstream Pure Land was in the belief that by invoking Amida’s name, a practice called the nenbutsu in Japanese, one effected a sort of spiritual time travel back to Amida’s own enlightenment, in which one then partook. The school’s name derives both from this belief and from the related practice of chanting the nenbutsu at particular times of day, somewhat similar to the set times for prayer in Islam.
I attempted to induce something similar to this recently, for secular reasons and involving my own past. On the way back from a road trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania from my apartment in Upstate New York, my housemate and I passed through Bordentown, the New Jersey river town where I spent most of my adolescence after my mother and I relocated from rural Vermont. I have not lived in Bordentown for a decade and had not even been there for almost eight years; I had little idea of what to expect from returning, but I did expect—and want—for it to involve a powerful emotional and even numinous reaction. I went out of my way to elicit this reaction by putting on Riot!, a Paramore album from 2007 (an extremely influential year in my life), while approaching the Delaware River from the west on Interstate 276. It worked. The two hours or so that my housemate and I spent in Bordentown overawed me so much that now, two weeks later, I have found myself waking up and lying in bed for half an hour thinking about it, remembering.