Blessed with true and real life,
This day, today, which never returns,
Is a precious day to be treasured.


- Kinuye Takeuchi

Heizei gojo is a Japanese term used in the nembutsu way of Shin Buddhism to express an ordinary life we live each day, but lived with deep faith and trust in Amida Buddha's timeless wisdom and compassion. This ordinary life is not simply describing our daily tasks at home, work, play, and social relationships , but its meaning touches and echoes our ordinary life filled with an appreciation for the inconceivable everyday dharma blessings emanating from the timeless storehouse of enlightenment itself.

The blessings of dharma we receive are not merely material, psychological, or physical, although they may appear so as by-products of our daily spiritual life. The fundamental blessings we receive within our ordinary life are a clear and transforming awareness of our true and real life as we live it daily.

As a person who ministers and counsels people in times of difficulties in their life journey, I have come to see that no one truly moves forward in life, in a meaningful way, without a clear appraisal and acceptance of one's real life, one's real self. This is not as easy nor as simple a task as some may think. Even when one has a glimpse into one's weakness, failures, and limitations, there is often a strong denial and resistance in accepting what one sees. The depth of our ego-centered inability to see our reality is fathomless. Difficulties and even pains - psychological and emotional - often escalate until one finally "sees" and realizes, and accepts one's reality - the inability to truly liberate oneself from one's fundamental ignorance and selfishness. "Hard is to be born into human life; now we live it. Difficult is it to hear the teachings of the blessed one; now we hear it," echoes one's existential condition."

My admiration for Shinran Shonin and those who have plumbed the depths of the nembutsu in their ordinary life relates specifically to their unstinting awareness and mature acceptance of their true ordinary self. The clarity of their awareness is not one of self-pity, self-defeat, self-doubt, or self-aggrandizement. Their awareness comes clearly in the light of Amida Buddha's great wisdom and compassion. Amida's boundless light of wisdom illuminates what we cannot see truly in ourselves just as the sun casts its bright light on the tree and clearly defines the shadow it casts. At the same time, Amida's limitless life of compassion embraces and affirms our whole being as we are, especially our karmic evils and blind passions we alone cannot readily see nor accept. Our life is transformed in the light of compassion and wisdom. "If we are not liberated in this world, in what life shall we be liberated?"

Such an awareness of our reality in the light and life of Amida Buddha empowers us with an inner freedom and joy heretofore unknown to us in our daily life. It allows us to think, feel, and speak in ways which are truly in concert with our transformed heart, mind and spirit. It allows us to hear and respond to ourselves and others authentically. It allows to surrender, accept, and move with the otherness of truth itself. And, it allows us to live appreciatively and humbly, with deep abiding faith and trust, in the fathomless depth and meaning at the heart of our ordinary life. As Shinran Shonin remarks in the Tannisho, Chapter 7, "In the person of nembutsu, there opens the great way of unobstructed freedom."

Embraced my true compassion
I vowed never to complain;
thinking thus, again I complained.

Rubbing my eyes in the morning, I began complaining;
out jumped Namu-amida-butsu,
and I really woke up!

(Both the above verses are by the late Haru Matsuda of Kona, Hawaii)