At that point, my conversation with this teacher broke down very quietly. As I said before, I am grateful for his time and attention and his sincere attempt to be helpful during my time of crisis. But I knew because I have read Shinran’s writings, more than once, that he was NOT teaching Shinran’s teaching accurately when he told me not to take Shinran’s plain words as simply true in the plain way Shinran said them.

When I had first come in contact with Shinran and Shin Buddhism, I had read many teachings on the itnernet in an attempt to understand what Shinran was taking about in addition to reading his own writings, and those of his followers like Yuien and Rennyo.

Now I went back with fresh eyes, and the suffering that life had brought, and was sensitive because of my experience to the differences between what Shinran was teaching, and what this Shin Buddhist teacher was teaching. Like Shinran’s student Yuien, I couldn’t help noting divergences from Shinran. And I couldn’t help wondering why there weren’t more experienced Shin Buddhists particularly Shin Buddhist scholars doing what Yuien did in lamenting the divergences in plain, honest language to help a Shin Buddhist beginner such as me.

It was during this internet research that I found Professor Eiken Kobai’s website.

It was mostly in Japanese but had a few sections with English translations including one long page with an unformatted draft of the book you are holding in your hand.

As I read it, I was struck by the clarity and power of Kobai’s writing as a GOOD TEACHER of Shinran:

• First, Kobai was committed to making Shinran’s words and ideas the PLUMBLINE for his own. He clearly was humble enough to know that it was his VOCATION to show exactly what Shinran believed and taught. To do that, he illustrated his teaching with passage after passage from his lifetime of study of Shinran’s work to VALIDATE everything he said. The purpose of his scholarship was not to advance HIS ideas–but SHINRAN’S ideas.
• Second, like our dharma heros Honen, Shinran, Yuien and Rennyo, Kobai was bold enough to make the distinction between true teachers, and true teaching from FALSE. Once again he was fulfilling the role of a GOOD TEACHER helping me with his honest scholarship to distinguish what Shnran did say from what he didn’t say. He actually had the courage to say what Honen said (in Yuien’s recounting): that people who taught such divergent teachings were not of the same SHINJIN as Honen and Shinran and thus not to be trusted as GOOD TEACHERS of Shinran’s teaching.

I had found someone whose lifetime of dedication to scholarship could provide me, a layperson, with a strong platform on which to discuss with others in the Shin Sangha my own concerns about the many divergences I was seeing from the TRUTH that Shinran taught.