I sense a very profound meaning in this term, sesshu. It refers to the fact that once Amida Buddha “takes us in,” he will absolutely never abandon us. Here we see the Venerable Master’s strong conviction that once we receive shinjin and become part of the “rightly-established group,” we are absolutely assured of birth in the Pure Land regardless of what may happen in the future.

The following passage is found in the Chapter on Faith of the Kyogyoshinsho:

“Destroying” means that when the “single mind of merit transference” in the “phase of going (to the Pure Land)” is awakened, there will be no (new) existences into which to be born, nor any (new) realms to go to. Since the causes and effects of the Six Realms and the Four Births are annihilated, the births and deaths in the “three existences” are instantly destroyed.

As can be determined by the above passage, the moment our shinjin is determined, our birth and death in the worlds of delusion in the “Six Realms” (rokushu) and the “Four Births” (shisho) is cut off. Further, in the Koso Wasan (Japanese Poems on the Eminent Masters), the Venerable Master wrote:

The moment we receive shinjin,
Hard and fixed like a diamond,
Amida’s spiritual light embraces and protects us,
Cutting us off completely from the cycle
of birth and death.

As can be determined from this poem and many other places in the Venerable Master’s writings, when our shinjin is determined, we are already within Amida Buddha’s protective embrace that guarantees our birth in the Pure Land. I sense the Venerable Master’s personal experience of the Buddha’s salvific activity in the phrase, “to take in and never discard.”