Of course, I am a Mahayana Buddhist because I think it offers sentient beings the greatest spiritual freedom. I would not be a Mahayanist if I did not believe this. I am able to embrace the skilful means of the Name, without having to explain away other wisdoms and traditions of the world as “false” or the works of an evil, divisive force. There are aspects of the Name in everything. Through the Name’s skilful means, I can see his words engraved on every tradition that honours its ageless principles of compassion, love, and insight. It is true freedom to devote one’s life to Amitabha, and the next, and the next, and with one’s bodhisattvahood, reveal the Name to the myriad suffering beings in the many universes scattered throughout the fabrics of reality. This awareness of one’s “debt” to a higher power, to the Presence, is accepted in many faiths. The very name of Islam means “submission” - submission to what is truly real. St. Paul writes of freedom through subservience to Christ - where one loses nothing and receives from Christ a hundredfold through one’s obedience. In a similar way, so too does the Presence of the Name permeate a single blade of grass with enlightenment, in which samsara is already liberated - it only needs to remember, to re-awaken itself to the sacred, holy syllables of “Namo Amitabha Buddha.”