Hiromasa Igarashi has been a bus driver for three years now. He's painfully shy, yet a real doer at the same time. It was Igarashi, after all, who was the first to greet every passenger with a smile. Now his fellow bus drivers all do the same, but it was Igarashi who started the practice. Driving a bus seems the perfect vocation for Igarashi, but he suffered through a lot of anger, frustration, and uncertainty before he discovered his calling.

In June 2001, Igarashi had been laid off by the construction-materials company he had worked at for 25 years. In a move to downsize its operations, the company had closed one of its plants, firing nearly 100 workers in the process. There had been rumors some six months earlier that the plant would close, and in April everyone was notified in writing that they would be out of a job. Igarashi was one of the plant employees who was let go.

"I thought I had steeled myself for this, but when I actually got my slip of paper it was hard to accept the reality."

Igarashi had warned his wife, Aiko, of what was to come. Perhaps because he had already prepared her for the bad news, she simply shrugged her shoulders when he got his official notice. "Well, there's nothing to be done about it," she said.

Their oldest daughter, Yuka, was still in her second year of high school and their second daughter, Maya, in her third year of junior high. Igarashi needed to find a new job quickly. But that was easier said than done for a man well into his forties. As he was turned down for one job after another, Igarashi felt as though he was being swallowed up in a dark abyss.

It was around this time that Kimiko Itagaki, chapter leader of the local Rissho Kosei-kai branch, invited Igarashi to the branch. There he met with Rev. Takashi Inageda, the branch head, who already knew of Igarashi's plight. "Before you start a new job, try coming to the branch every day for the next month," Rev. Inageda suggested. It was at this point that Igarashi's life really began to change.

"My parents had been Rissho Kosei-kai members and up until that time I had undertaken my duties as a member more out of a sense of obligation than anything else. I didn't really believe that faith could make a person happy. But going to the branch every day gave me something to cling to. It was a relief to have a 'job' to report to every day. I found the exercise very comforting."

The day after his talk with Rev. Inageda, Igarashi began his daily commute to the branch, taking a homemade lunch with him each time. Every day began at nine with sutra chanting and a hoza session. In the afternoon, Igarashi joined the branch leaders as they made their dissemination rounds. Everything was refreshingly new. More than anything, Igarashi was surprised by the frequency with which people expressed their thanks and appreciation in the hoza sessions.

In the sessions, Igarashi listened to people relate their troubles and heard how they sought solace in the Buddha's teachings. He watched as they put the Buddha's teachings into practice and supported each other in overcoming their various ills. The process of salvation was laid bare for all to see. Over and over again, Igarashi witnessed people finding happiness through faith and something began to change within his own heart.

"There's a woman, well into her eighties, who finds great pleasure in the hoza sessions and comes very regularly. At first, I couldn't understand what attracted her so, but as I sat in on one hoza session after another, I found myself offering sincere congratulations to those who had been saved by the teaching. At the same time, I could feel my own courage coming to the fore. I was very much moved by the story of a woman in her forties who spoke cheerfully of her long battle with cancer and how she had learned to live with her disease. I soon realized that I was not the only one who was suffering. If I could learn to trust in the Buddha as these people did, I should be able to find the key to happiness that must surely be hidden within my own troubles. After all, the Buddha was always working to show us the Way."

Igarashi's daily commute to the local branch continued for a month and a half. He began looking for work again in earnest, this time confident that the Buddha would lead him to a job, and he continued to participate in the hoza sessions whenever he could.