By Rev. Jerry Kyosei Hirano.
With humor and humility, candor and compassion, Reverend Hirano shares experiences from his own life in essays he has written over the past 25 years as a Jodo Shinshu minister. Through his insightful reflections he invites us to look deeper where we get a glimpse of the nembutsu teachings that are constantly coming to us through our daily lives.
Reverend Hirano presents the essays in four sections: birth, old age, sickness, and death -- the types of sufferings the Buddha taught in the Four Noble Truths. However, far from being pessimistic, Reverend Hirano shows that all experiences lead us to the nembutsu where we can learn what it truly means to be human: that we are embraced by the wisdom and compassion of Amida Buddha exactly as we are, and with this realization, we enter the realm of gratitude.
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Teriyaki Priest
In Teriyaki Priest, Rev. Hirano has collected essays from his 25-year tenure as a Jodo Shinshu minister. While they range in subject from lessons learned from his children to a particularly bad dream involving chickens, to deep personal losses, the constant heartbeat that underpins the book is his gratitude for his faith, his family, and his friends. The essays are thoughtful, eye-opening, and well worth reading. They give you a picture of a decent, kind, thoughtful man whom one would like to know even better. A very good read, indeed.