The Venerable Master listened earnestly to Master Honen’s Dharma Talks and became his disciple. He abandoned the way of “self-centered effort” that he had followed until then, and began following the way of “Buddha-centered effort” (tariki). In the Chapter on Transformed Land of his “Teaching, Practice, Shinjin, and Realization” (Kyogyoshinsho), the Venerable Master wrote:

I, Gutoku Shinran, disciple of Shakyamuni, discarded sundry practices and took refuge in the Primal Vow during the first year of the Kennin era (the metal/cock year, 1201 CE).

In other words, the Venerable Master stated that during the year 1201 CE, when he was 29 years of age, this ignorant Shinran who is unable to follow any religious practice, abandoned the way of “self-centered effort” in which religious practices are performed in order to attain Enlightenment and accepted the Nembutsu teaching which relies on Amida Buddha’s Primal Vow.

The Venerable Master entered Amida Buddha’s world of salvation because of this encounter with Master Honen. There are, unfortunately many misunderstandings of the Jodo-Shinshu teaching as being salvation that takes place after leaving this world, which implies that we become Enlightened only after we die. This is absolutely not correct. The salvation we experience is while we are still in this world – while still alive.

I frequently hear people say they cannot understand a Pure Land that they can neither go to nor see during life, and that the only time we will be able to determine whether the Pure Land does or does not exist is after we die. That, however, is absolutely not the case.

Both the Venerable Master and Master Rennyo (1415-1499 CE, the 8th Spiritual Leader of the Hongwanji) positively state that the certainty of birth in the Pure Land is experienced in the present. They could say that only because they were both within the protective embrace of the Primal Vow while alive.

There are many places in the Venerable Master’s voluminous writings in which we can determine how important he considered his coming in contact with Master Honen was. I believe one example is his Japanese poem (Wasan) included in “Hymns of the Eminent Monks” (Koso Wasan):

Countless kalpas and innumerable lives passed
Without knowing the strong cause for being liberated;
Were it not for my teacher Honen,
My present life would also have passed in vain.

This expresses the Venerable Master’s awareness that he had been deluded for a long time because of his self-centeredness. He was unable to escape suffering in the world of delusion, and accumulated nothing but evil karma as a result of being born, dying, and then being born again. Only because of Master Honen did he finally come in contact with the world of Amida Buddha’s salvation. If he had not met Master Honen – if he had not heard about the world of the Nembutsu – he would not have been able to awaken to birth in the Pure Land. He would have been destined to continue wandering in the world of delusion. What the Venerable Master spoke of was absolutely not something that happened after he died. I believe the Venerable Master’s words above overflow with joy at knowing he was saved in his present life.