Akegarasu Haya

Akegarasu was also a former head of administration of the Higashi Hongan-ji who was a major inspiration to the formation of the Dobokai Movement.

Due to his father Enen's death when he was 10, his mother Taki struggled through the hardships associated with poverty and single parenthood while raising him.

He received traditionalist Jōdo Shinshū teachings until his fateful meeting, and by the age of fourteen, the talented writer had published several books of 31-syllable poetry.

Kiyozawa Manshi, a great Japanese Shin reformer who taught Buddhism through life experience, met him on September 11, 1893, and became his teacher.

For approximately the next ten years the two attempted to translate Buddhism into ordinary language and to manifest it into their simple everyday living.

But upon re-reading the Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra he felt that he was finally beginning to realize the essential message of his teacher Rev.

His experiential insight was that the story of Larger Sutra, where the hero, Dharmakara Bodhisattva, eventually becomes Amida Buddha, was expressing a timeless spirit emerging then and there within his own heart-mind.