VOLUME 5 • ISSUE 2 • June 2025

HONPA HONGWANJI MISSION OF HAWAII’S TRIPLE CELEBRATION
‘Intuitively Connecting to the World of Absolute Truth’

Among many highlights of Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawai‘i’s Triple Celebration was Reverend Dr. Takashi Miyaji’s keynote speech entitled “Why Life Is Great: Understanding Our Moment in Timelessness.”

The following is part two of his presentation delivered on Sept. 7 at Ala Moana Hotel. See part one from the March 2025 Ka Leo Kāhea or view a video of the complete talk at https://youtu.be/ZxOWAkdI2w0.

BY REV. DR. TAKASHI MIYAJI,
DEAN, INSTITUTE OF BUDDHIST STUDIES
MINISTER, SOUTHERN ALAMEDA COUNTY BUDDHIST CHURCH

We have to try and seek out Amida Buddha’s calling voice. We have to listen now and in our pursuit of this, open our hearts up for this message to enter us. Shinran Shonin calls this Eshin, where there is a 180° turn and we go from egocentricity to Amida-centricity.

It’s kind of like being slapped in the face.

When you get slapped in the face, there’s a shock that happens and you kind of have this out-of-body experience where you see yourself as you truly are, then you go back to being yourself.

But all it took was that one instant in which you saw your true and naked self as you are.

There’s a technical term we use for this: We call it the “one thought-moment of Shinjin.” It’s the first time that we’re jolted into seeing reality as such; into seeing the complete and naked foolish self that we are and what we’ve been doing all this time.

It is a moment of deep embarrassment in one’s foolish self. Some will call this “shame.” Other people might use the term “self reproach.” If you don’t like that word, there’s “lamentation,” or “regret.”

But what’s important to note is that Jodo Shinshu Buddhism doesn’t end only on a self-deprecating note. It is always coupled with momentous joy and elation that one is embraced by the world of truth.

Amida Buddha’s Great Working is when one becomes deeply humbled and grateful for that slap in the face. There is happiness, on one hand, and this self-reproach on the other, combined to make this resolve of simple quietude of the heart.

It is a firm, yet flexible state of equilibrium within the heart, where one is not in delirium with ecstasy, but is also not in a state of utter depression and self-hatred.

One is neither jumping with joy, nor whipping oneself in the back over one’s past karmic transgressions. It is a quietness and calmness of the heart.

It is the phenomenon of being made to let go of the egocentric self where one connects with the world of Amida Buddha’s Great Compassion.

In many aspects of our life, we’re taught or conditioned to think about things from a logical standpoint. We’re taught at a very early age that we have to use our smarts to get ahead, and that we need to use our logical sensibilities to understand this world. That’s what we’re taught and to a certain extent, that’s true. I’m not denying that. However, we also have to remember that the story doesn’t stop there.

We must continue to the Next Step which is to understand that there is a world that operates on a logical basis far different from the one that we are accustomed to here in this world of delusion.

We have to understand that there is a world of truth that transcends human reasoning. Every time I say that, I get asked, “Does that mean we need to make a leap of faith? Does that mean we must abandon our logical thinking and blindly believe what we’re told in some kind of Dogma?”

No, absolutely not. For us, as Jodo Shinshu Buddhists, religion and science are not at odds with each other. In fact, religion helps us to affirm the realities of science, and science helps us to reaffirm our religious understanding.

However, the world of absolute truth is not something we access through our rational thinking. It’s something we connect to intuitively.

We feel it at certain times in our lives but we can’t quite understand this world that reaches out to us. We feel it, we sense it, but we cannot quite pinpoint what it is exactly. What is this connection that I feel with something outside of me? Those are the moments in which truth is calling out to us. I know you have these moments. The fact that you’re a living being means that you have had these connections at one time or another.

Shinran Shonin explains those moments as hearing the Calling Voice of Amida Buddha’s voiceless voice. It is when we open our hearts and answer that call. There, the Buddha’s heart coincides with mine. That’s when I see both the futility and profundity of this life. That’s when I see both the lunacy and the quietude of my life. That’s when I see Samsara embraced in Nirvana.

This is the Buddhist perspective. It gives us the chance to see ourselves as it truly is. But like the blinding light that is too bright for us to see, the Buddha’s bright and warm world of light is far beyond that which we can comprehend.

We can get a sense of it, but we can’t quite understand it entirely. This is the encountering of Truth. It is not something that is understood with human rationality. It is something that is intuitively felt.

I’d like to give you an example that might help portray what I’m talking about. My grandfather, Kakue Miyaji, was a Buddhist scholar who taught at Kyoto Women’s University for a long time and a lot of people remember him fondly as a passionate speaker of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism.

Sometimes he was known to cry in his Dharma messages, as he was often moved by this world of Great Compassion. I knew him more as Ojiichan, Grandpa, and not the scholar that he was. But I have many memories of him. I’d like to share a story my father told me that he would often share.

My grandfather, Uno Kakue, was born in Nara, Japan, in a temple located in a village called Yoshino. However, at a young age, he was adopted into the Miyaji family who had close ties with the Uno family.

The Miyaji family owned a temple where they resided, which is common in Japan. So, my grandfather became Kakue “Miyaji” instead of “Uno” and the Miyaji family lived on the island of Shikoku.

The Miyaji family had no children, so you could imagine when my grandfather was adopted into the family, which was not an uncommon practice in Japan at the time, they were really happy that he came to the family.

His adoptive mother, Komano-san in the Miyaji family, showered him with love and treated him with great care almost to the point of pampering him.

When my grandfather went off to study Buddhism in Kyoto, he would come home to Shikoku, and in those days, you had to take a ferry to get from Honshu to Shikoku. Every time he would come home, his mother would be waiting for him at the front of the port waving at him.

She would be eagerly waiting and waiting. He would be a little embarrassed because when he came off the ferry, she would scream and shout and make a scene in front of others. That’s how excited she would be to see him. Then when they meet, the first thing she would say would be, “When’s the next time you are coming home?”

She would not ask, “How was the trip? What would you like to eat?” The first thing she would say is, “When’s the next time you are coming home?”

You get this sense of this endearing mother who loved him dearly. After some time, my grandfather was drafted into the Japanese Army, and he was sent off to Manchuria. Unfortunately, Komano-san passed away during this time. She was cremated according to Japanese customs of the time, and her ashes were kept in a wooden box, an urn at the Daezenji temple in Shikoku.

Fortunately, my grandfather survived the war and was able to come back to Japan. Cities were firebombed, and many of the urban centers were reduced to ash and rubble.

Most of Kochi city was left intact, except one of the only bombs that dropped on that city, which happened to land near Daezenji. The temple caught fire and burned to the ground.

After hearing this, my grandfather hurried home and saw that the temple was reduced to ashes. As he combed the area in search of anything he could salvage, he came across a small box tucked away in the rubble. As he wiped off the soot and ash, he realized that the box he was holding was his mother’s urn. Out of this entire area that he combed through, he stumbled upon his mother’s urn! What are the chances of that? What are the odds?

Yet, there he was, holding this box-urn. Was it a coincidence? Or was it meant to be?

As my grandfather was holding this wooden urn, he does something peculiar. He put it next to his ear and shook the box, and what he heard was the bones of the ashes rattling inside the box. Keep in mind that cremated ashes in Japan are different from America in the sense that here in America when remains are cremated, they’re pulverized to fine dust, right?

If you have ever been to a funeral in Japan, you know that some fragments of the cremated remains are intact and that is what’s placed in the urn in addition to the remaining ashes. That’s a common practice to this day.

My grandfather shakes this wooden box and he heard the rattling of the bones, but as he hears this noise, what immediately resounds in his heart, in his mind, is his mother’s voice:

“Tsugi itsu kaette kuruno?” When’s the next time you are coming home?

How is this possible? She’s not physically there. Is it his imagination? Or is it something much more profound taking place?

This is what we call the working of the world of Great Compassion.

Had that been me who rattled the box, I would have only heard bones rattling. Had that been my father? Same thing. He would have heard only the noise of the bones.

It had to be my grandfather who had his specific karmic background, who was in that specific time and place in order for him to have encountered the timeless working of Great Life.

This was his moment of the connection between time and timelessness, between finite and infinite. It is serendipitous yet, inevitable.

It is “indescribable, inexplicable and inconceivable,” or fukasho, fukasetsu, fukashi.

This kind of world is beyond what we’re able to define, discern and comprehend just by human rationality and reasoning. All we can do is humbly receive this in gratitude.

There is a world that is more profound that is at work at this very minute. The voice of his mom, Komano-san, emerging in his heart, when he shook that urn, was the working of Amida Buddha speaking to Kakue-san, telling him to come here, telling him the Pure Land awaited him.

You, too, will have your specific encountering with the world of truth that only you will understand. It is the encountering that is customized to your karmic upbringing.

It is universal for all, yes, yet it is specific to each and every one of you. That oxymoron itself is the very evidence of the limits of human reasoning. To the Buddha, this makes perfect sense. To us, this is inconceivable. But when this encountering happens, all you will be able to do is to respond with “Namo Amida Butsu.”

That’s all there is left to do. It is you saying, “Message received. Namo Amida Butsu.”

It gives me great joy knowing that moment will come to you someday, if it hasn’t already.

Then you’ll know what Shinran Shonin was talking about. Then you’ll know why this tradition has existed for 800 years just counting from Shinran Shonin; 2,500 years from the time of Shakyamuni Buddha himself.

Then you’ll know why all the criticisms against Jodo Shinshu that, “It’s not real Buddhism” are all baseless and not deserving of serious attention.

Then you’ll know why coming to temple is so damn important for each and every one of us.

The Buddha is calling to us as the only Nembutsu.

Each of you will have your own story of how the Buddha’s compassion shook you to your core.

Photo 2: Courtesy of Alan Kubota

Rod Moriyama, left, then-president of Wahiawa Hongwanji Mission, shared a lighthearted moment with Rev. Dr. Takashi Miyaji after the keynote speech.

It may not be through your mother like it was for my grandfather. Perhaps it’s through your spouse. Perhaps it’s through an encounter with a stranger. Perhaps it’s when you’re walking on the beach by yourself as the sun sets in the distant horizon.

We don’t know, but rest assured we, too, are being guided by the immeasurable causes and conditions of a transcendent world of boundless wisdom and compassion.

The more we hear this message, the more we come to encounter this world, the more we start to sense it in our everyday lives. The world of absolute truth is always speaking to us, we just have to be ready to hear it. When we open our hearts up to the Nembutsu teaching, we will gain the ears to hear the Amida Buddha’s calling voice.

Thank you for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be the speaker of Triple Celebration.

To recap, first I talked about who Amida Buddha is: the transcendence of space and time. Then I talked about the Nembutsu being the connection to Amida Buddha.

Amida Buddha calls out to us much like a mother would her child. Then the child learns to respond back.

However, it is hard to understand this connection due to our blind passions. Nevertheless, despite having these blind passions, we are still able to awaken to the understanding that we are embraced in the world of Great Compassion. That connection, is indeed universal, but it is also universally unique to your specific karmic causes and conditions.

The honor of speaking today really makes me realize just how much we are being guided and supported by our loved ones and ancestors who came before us. It is their wish for us to find true and lasting peace and happiness. It is the same wish that coincides with that of Amida Buddha’s wish known as the Primal Vow.

I hope this occasion reinvigorates a sense of pride and joy not only in our past, but also as Jodo Shinshu Buddhists living today. This will, in turn become the same hope and wish for the next generation to be able to hear the calling voice of Amida Buddha’s great Wisdom and Compassion.

There is no greater gift we can leave behind other than the message of the timeless and universal embracement of the Buddha. All other things are fleeting and impermanent, only the Nembutsu is true and real.

Let’s help spread this message to a world that so desperately needs to hear this teaching of universal spiritual liberation. Let’s share the joy of the Nembutsu together with all beings of this world, just as the theme of this conference suggests.

I will close with the opening words from Shinran Shonin in his book, “The Kyogyoshinsho” which expounds his deep joy in encountering the wonderful Nembutsu teaching:

“How joyous I am, my heart and mind being rooted in the Buddha-ground of the universal Vow, and my thoughts and feelings flowing within the Dharma-ocean which is beyond comprehension!

“I am deeply aware of the Tathagata’s immense compassion, and I sincerely revere the benevolent care behind the masters’ teaching activity.

“My joy grows ever fuller, my gratitude and indebtedness ever more compelling.”

Namo Amida Butsu