Again, in Article 155 of that same work, Master Rennyo said:

“Make listening to the teaching of Buddha-dharma primary and worldly affairs secondary.

“Listening to the teaching of Buddha-dharma only in the leisure you have after your worldly affairs are taken care of is regrettable indeed because there is no tomorrow when it comes to listening to the Dharma,” Master Rennyo said.

He then quoted a poem by the Venerable Master Shinran to support his position:

Those who fight through the flames
Of the great-thousand worlds
To hear the Buddha’s Honorable Name
Are assured of attaining
The “state of non-retrogression.”

Master Rennyo stressed the importance of “hearing” using the phrase “great-thousand worlds” from the Venerable Master Shinran’s “Hymns of the Pure Land” (Jodo Wasan) to reinforce his point.

When he was 29 years of age, the Venerable Master Shinran discarded the way of “self-centered effort” and accepted the way of “Buddha-centered power.” As I have stated previously, he considered shinjin to be completely based on “Buddha-centered power” as expressed in phrases such as, “shinjin of ‘merit transference’ of the ‘power of the Primal Vow’” and “shinjin given to us by the Tathagata.” In the General Preface to his “Teaching, Practice, Faith and Attainment,” the Venerable Master Shinran wrote:

Ahh, hard to encounter, even in many lifetimes, is Amida’s Universal Vow, the decisive cause of birth (in the Pure Land)! Hard to realize, even in myriads of kalpas, is pure shinjin that is true and real so if you realize this practice and shinjin, rejoice at the conditions from the distant past that have brought it about!

Again, in his “Passages on the Pure Land Way” (Jodo Monrui Jujo), he uses almost exactly the same words:

Ahh, hard to encounter, even in many lifetimes, is Amida’s Universal Vow, the decisive cause of birth (in the Pure Land). And hard to realize, even in myriads of kalpas, is pure shinjin that is true and real, so if you realize shinjin, rejoice at the conditions from the distant past that have brought it about.