 Since our fundamental concern is with characteristically Japanese developments of Pure Land thought, I will focus in particular on the stream of Hōnen. It was Hōnen who achieved perhaps the radical doctrinal innovation of his seminal period in Japanese Buddhist history by establishing the practice of vocal nembutsu as an independent, self-sufficient path of Buddhist praxis. Despite widespread esteem for his priestly and scholarly attainments and the purity of his religious aspirations, Hōnen himself, in his penetrating self-reflection, expressed a profound awareness of his incapacity to fulfill any Buddhist practice and thereby advance himself toward enlightenment. He therefore searched throughout Buddhist tradition for an accessible path, and at length found the exposition of the nembutsu.