I am often amazed at the richness of our spiritual life as it is revealed in the many persons who walk and have walked the way of Nembutsu. Their inner life is clear and distinct in the same way light illumines the dark chamber of a closed room. Their insights and experiences guide us into exploring the labyrinth of our own heart, mind, and spirit. Their discovery of self is often one of refined sensitivity, joyful gratitude, and inexpressible thanks.

Each person's inner discovery implodes a mysterious corner of our own heart and mind. Each person's awakened self signals the promise of our potential to realize our true and real being. Such an awareness is at the heart of a living Nembutsu faith, which is "ineffable, inexpressible, and beyond our intellectual comprehension." (Tannisho)

In 1968, an article I translated by the late Hanada, Masao Sensei, whom I had the privilege of meeting in Nagoya in 1981, expresses the simplicity and clarity of a person living at home spiritually in his living faith. His writing resonates with the meaning of living fully and clearly in Amida Buddha's immeasurable light and immeasurable life.

When I was a child, my right thumb was seriously infected after an accident. I spite of receiving many different treatments, it never healed properly. The doctor told us that the thumb will not return to its original shape. So my thumb, to this day, remains crooked and misshapen.

In spite of the doctor's pronouncement, however, I remember the many nights my father, after coming home from work, would massage my crooked thumb. It seemed he massaged it for hours with an inexpressible love and kindness. Still, my thumb remained misshapen.

Forty long years have now passed since my father's death. Yet, whenever I see my crooked thumb, I can still see my father's kind and gentle face and deeply feel his presence with me. My father's untiring and unstinting love is fully expressed in my crooked thumb. Today, I realize with inexpressible gratitude, my father's unconditional love in this misshapen and crooked thumb. He heart and spirit is alive and vivid in my crooked thumb.

In a similar way, our spiritual parent is truly expressed through the unconditional compassion and wisdom of the Buddha's enlightened heart. We do not encounter and meet this loving heart only in the clean high ground of our daily life when it goes according to our wish and desires. No! We encounter the Buddha's loving heart in the dark, wet marshlands of the struggles with our blind karmic passions and ignorance. In the crooked and misshapen ways of our ego-self, the Buddha's limitless caring heart embraces our whole being and transforms our life into one of infinite light and life.

Hanada Sensei embodies the meaning of living intimately in the spirit of the Nembutsu and clearly portrays the spiritual life that "in the person of Nembutsu lies the unhindered way of absolute freedom". (Tannisho). Such a meaning is potentially open to each of us also when we entrust ourselves to the limitless workings of Amida Buddha's other power.

Sakyamuni and Amida are our father and mother,
Full of love and compassion;
Guiding us through various skillful means,
They bring us to awaken the supreme faith (shinjin).

- Shinran, Hymns of the Pure Land Masters.