There are MILLIONS who are seeking to understand the problem of suffering–both personal suffering and global suffering.

There are MILLIONS who are looking for the end of suffering at last enlightenment Buddhahood by whatever name it is called.

For those MILLIONS of plain people the dharma gate of Shinran offers a guaranteed path an easy path and in this age of Dharma Decline the ONLY path to answer their questions and to meet their deepest need and mine.

That is why just as Rennyo said we need TRUE teachers in the Shin Sangha – teachers like Professor Eiken Kobai who will use their scholarly vocation to present Shinran’s teaching just as Shinran would present it himself.

For me, a lot of what I read in Professor Kobai’s book was confirmation of what I had read in Shinran’s works already. But I personally want to thank him, publicly in this introduction, for making clear to me Shinran’s plain teaching about SALVATION IN THE PRESENT. As he points out, THIS is the very heart of Shinran’s unique contribution to Pure Land thought. It is Shinran who teaches unequivically that even one moment of thought of entrusting Amida Buddha FULLY puts each and every one in the “rightly established group” of those who will take rebirth in the Pure Land at the end of this life.

Professor Kobai explains this with a clarity that made Shinran’s TRUE teaching come alive for me with even greater power than before. And that is what a true teacher does, whether ancient or contemporary, Japanese or American, scholar or layperson.

I also want to thank him for his COURAGE for being willing to point out based on his lifetime of scholarship and knowledge of the history of the Shin Sangha the kinds of FALSE teachings that have come up, over and over again.

Once again, he is humble enough to look to our common teacher Shinran to refute false teaching and to declare boldly, just like Honen and Shinran did, that a person of the same SHINJIN as they would never make such foolish and misleading statements.