No.38 On Nembutsu as ‘grateful response’

Bhadda, one of Shakyamuni Buddha’s disciples, first came to the Buddha at the age of seven, accompanied by his mother. Ceasing his meditation, Shakyamuni welcomed him with the words “Oh, Bhadda! Come to me!” Reminiscing about it years later Bhadda declared, “That indeed for me was ‘receiving the precepts’.”

Our nembutsu as ‘grateful response,’ a gift in itself in our daily life, is of the same order as Bhadda’s awareness that everything is a gift, as he experienced when he visited the Buddha with his mother.

佛弟子バッダは七歳の時、母親に連れられて釈尊の許に来た。
釈尊は瞑想を止めて、「バッダよ、来なさい」と迎えてくださった。
「これが私の受戒であった」と述懐している。
私が給わる報恩の念佛もこの事実とひとつである。