I once traveled to Osaka City to visit Yoshizawa, a Dharma practitioner. Upon my arrival, he informed a fellow practitioner who came with an elderly woman named Aboshi.

       I spoke the Dharma for about half an hour, when suddenly Aboshi murmured to herself: “So he was already embraced by the light.”

       Her words struck me deeply. I stopped my Dharma talk and listened as she shared her story for the next two and a half hours.

        She began:

       “My husband was a violent man, and for years I suffered from terrible chest pain due to that. But recently, the worst happened—our twenty-year-old son died. He had fallen in with bad elements and was loathed by the entire village. Eventually, he developed a heart condition that worsened quickly. In his final days, his pain was so unbearable I couldn’t stand watching it. One day, he grabbed a kitchen knife, and pleaded: ‘Please—cut my throat!’

       The agony lasted nearly an hour. As he lay in torment, I said to him:

       ‘Son, the pain you are feeling now is nothing compared to what waits ahead. The sufferings in hell are a million times worse than anything this world knows!’

       Upon hearing that, he wept and said to me:

       ‘Mother, please—tell me how I can be saved!’

       I heard his plea, but held back my emotions and kept silent for nearly an hour. All the while, my son was in tears, begging with all his might.

       When I sensed his final moment was near, I leaned in and said:

       ‘Amitabha Buddha is full of compassion. He opens his arms to embrace even those destined for hell, and leads them to the Land of Ultimate Bliss quickly.’ 

       At these words, my son’s tear-filled eyes lit up with joy. He began reciting Amitabha’s name without pause. I chanted the Gatha of True Faith by his side. The doctor had predicted he would pass away by ten that night. But when the hour came, he did not die. Instead, he seemed to have drifted into a peaceful sleep.

       The next day at around two in the afternoon, my son opened his eyes wide. He was still chanting Amitabha’s name. He called everyone to gather by his bedside and said, ‘You should all be willing to learn the Buddha’s teaching.’

       He then spoke his parting thoughts on many worldly matters—so unlike the wayward habits he had shown over the years.

       I felt the moment had come. So I stood before Amitabha Buddha and chanted The Gatha of True Faith once more. My son heard me. Upon finishing the

       Gatha, I said the Dedication of Merits Verse from the Pure Land tradition:

May the merit of this practice
Be shared equally with all beings,
That together we may awaken the Bodhi-mind…

       And before I could finish the last line of the Dedication verse, my son passed away.

       Therefore, instead of reciting the last line, ‘May we be reborn in the Land of Peace and Joy,’ I softly said:

 ‘A Bodhisattva has just departed’.

       I broke down in tears, my head buried in my hands. For a long time after that, I drifted away from Amitabha Buddha, no longer reciting his name.”

       The old woman, Aboshi,  recounted this sorrowful chapter from her past, laying bare her emotions. It must have been a release from years of grief.

       I was thinking, what wondrous Dharma she was imparting on her son during his darkest hour. Even though he pleaded, “Tell me how I can be saved,” she let him endure another hour of pain.

       I realize that in choosing to let her son endure another hour of extreme suffering before telling him how to be saved, Aboshi was trying to make sure that the Buddha’s teaching was effectively transmitted at the right time - when her son was finally ready for it. It was an act of reverence to honor the teaching itself. 

       It’s an example of skillful means - teaching the Dharma according to the mental state and capacity of her son.

       I was deeply moved.

(Translated by the Pure Land School Translation Team;
edited by Householder Fojin)