terrible alternative for a man of noble birth and refined
culture. He took it, however, with perfect serenity as a mission to
those untaught and neglected people, and into their darkness he
brought the light of the Father of Lights, and the people flocked to
the warmth and wonder of the new hope, and heard him gladly. The
story is told by a contemporary, whom I have thus rendered:

"In the spring of the third year of the era of Kennin, the age of
Shinran Shonin was twenty-nine. Driven by the desire for seclusion,
he departed to the monastery of Yoshimizu. For as his day was so
remote from the era of the Lord Buddha, and the endurance of man in
the practice of religious austerity was now weakened, he would fain
seek the one broad, straight way that is now made plain before us,
leaving behind him the more devious and difficult roads in which he
had a long time wandered. For so it was that Honen Shonin, the great
teacher of the Doctrine of the Land of Pure Light, had taught him
plainly of the inmost heart of the Faith, raising up in him the firm
foundation of that teaching. Therefore he certainly received at that
time the true meaning of the Divine Promise of universal salvation,
and attained unto the imperishable faith by which alone the ignorant
can enter into Nirvana without condition or price.

"From the province of Echigo Shinran passed onward to that of
Hitachi, and entered into seclusion at Inada, that little village of
the region of Kasama. Very lonely was his dwelling, yet many
disciples sought after him, and though the humble door of the
monastery was closed against them, many nobles and lesser persons
thronged into the village. So his hope of spreading abroad the Holy
Teaching was fulfilled and his desire to bring joy to the people was
satisfied. Thus he declared that the revelation vouchsafed to him in