Divine and human agency in figurative language from John’s Gospel and Jodo‑Shinshu Buddhism

Abstract

This paper seeks to extend the focus of previous analyses of agency and metaphor in Christianity and Buddhism (Charteris-Black 2017; Chilton 2004; Richardson 2012; Richardson & Nagashima 2018) by comparing the results of a previous cognitive linguistic analysis of John 14:6 (Kövecses 2011) with an analysis of figurative language and agency patterns in an extract from a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist text (Wilson 2009). The comparative analysis highlights both locally contingent and more stable differences in both texts. However, we also discuss some highly schematic conceptual similarities that deserve further study. These include some similarities in their use of journey and light source domains, the role of the divine agent in the salvation process, one aspect of the divine entity embodying and acting as instrument for another aspect of the same divine entity, and the divine act being a paragon for human action.