That feeling has not changed in the least even today. The benefit we receive is the true and real benefit that we receive in this present life. It is directly related to the life we are presently leading.

The Venerable Master Shinran emphasized the benefits we receive in our present life. In the Chapter on Faith of his “Teaching, Practice, Faith and Attainment,” he listed ten of them. In the “Hymns on Benefits in the Present” (Genzei Riyaku Wasan) part of “Hymns of the Pure Land” (Jodo Wasan), he wrote 15 wasan regarding benefits. All of them can be considered benefits that derive from being in the “group of those assured (of birth in the Pure Land).” In his “Notes on Passages About the Pure Land” (Jodo Monrui Jusho), the Venerable Master wrote:

When we receive shinjin and recite his Name,
Amida’s Light embraces and protects us,
And we acquire immeasurable virtue in this life.

Here the Venerable Master clearly states that when we recite the Nembutsu with “settled shinjin,” we are taken in and embraced by the light of Amida Buddha’s salvation and receive immeasurable virtue (benefits) in this life (this world).

The fourth wasan in the “Hymns on Benefits in the Present” (Genzei Riyaku Wasan) is:

When we recite Namo Amida Butsu
We gain boundless benefits in the present;
The evil of transmigrating disappears,
And determinate karma
And an untimely end are eliminated.

The phrase, “gain boundless benefits in the present” can only be a benefit of being in the “‘group of those assured (of birth in the Pure Land)’ in our ‘present life.’”

Further, in his “Hymns of the Pure Land,” the Venerable Master wrote:

Those who receive shinjin in joy
Are said to be equal to Tathagatas.
Great shinjin is itself Buddha-nature
And Buddha-nature is none other than Tathagata.

And again, the Venerable Master wrote in “Hymns on the Three Periods”:

Five trillion and 670 millions of years...
That is how much time must pass
Before Miroku Bosatsu attains Buddhahood.
But those who receive true shinjin
Will become enlightened with the end of life.

Receiving true and real shinjin
Means immediately joining the “group of those
assured (of birth in the Pure Land)”
Where we attain the same rank as Miroku Bosatsu,
the future Buddha,
And guaranteed Supreme Enlightenment.