I share it with you here:

Overwhelmed with grief after the suicide of my daughter, I contacted a nationally known Shin Buddhist teacher whose writings I had read. He was kind enough to enter into an e-mail dialogue with me, as I sought for a way to handle the great suffering I was experiencing. He also sent me some books that informed his own thought. To this day I remain grateful for his time and his efforts.

Looking for comfort, for light, for light in my darkness, I was re-reading the Tannisho (Lamenting Divergences) one day. The following passage leaped off the page, as though our teacher Shinran was speaking personally to my situation and me:

There is a difference in compassion between the Path of Sages and the Path of Pure Land. The compassion in the Path of Sages is expressed through pity, sympathy, and care for all beings, but rare is it that one can help another as completely as one desires.

The compassion in the Path of Pure Land is to quickly attain Buddhahood, saying the nembutsu, and with the true heart of compassion and love save all beings completely as we desire.

In this life no matter how much pity and sympathy we may feel for others, it is impossible to help another as we truly wish; thus our compassion is inconsistent and limited.

Only the saying of nembutsu manifests the complete and never ending compassion which is true, real, and sincere.

I, Shinran, have never even once uttered the Nembutsu for the sake of my father and mother. The reason is that all beings have been fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, in the timeless process of birth-and-death.

When I attain Buddhahood in the next birth, each and everyone will be saved.

If it were a good accomplished by my own powers, then I could transfer the accumulated merits of the Nembutsu to save my father and mother.

But since such is not the case, when we become free from self-power and quickly attain the enlightenment of the Pure Land, we will save those bound closest to us through transcendental powers, no matter how deeply they are immersed in the karmic sufferings of the six realms and four modes of birth.

Here was Shinran my teacher speaking to the very heart of my grief:

• I couldn’t help my beloved daughter as I wanted to, even though I had tried. She had succumbed to a downward spiral of depression, and nothing I did could pull her out of it. My pity, sympathy and care were real but I was LIMITED because I am just not a Buddha. As Shinran says, I simply couldn’t help her as completely as I desired.
• More than that, accepting Buddha’s fundamental teaching that we go through endless lives of suffering, and our karmic actions in one life determine our rebirth in the next, I was overwhelmed with concern about the karmic ramifications of her action in taking her own life.