A man loses everything and finds a monk who doesn't promise it back, only tells him why suffering happens at all. The film doesn't argue philosophy at you; it watches Ryōken realize the answer was never about fixing his life, it was about living it anyway. By the end you understand why a historical priest mattered enough to be remembered, because you've seen what his words did to someone who had stopped believing they mattered at all.

Ryōken has lost everything. Once a man consumed by bitterness toward his circumstances and the temples and monks around him, he pinned his hopes on his coming child, only to watch that hope vanish in a single tragic incident. Adrift in darkness, he encounters the teachings of Rennyo, a Buddhist priest whose words offer him a reason to keep living. The message, drawn from what the sage Shinran taught about why we live, gives shape to an answer amid his suffering. Inspired and transformed, Ryōken dedicates himself to Rennyo as a disciple. But their growing following at the temple provokes anger from rival Buddhist sects. Forced out of Kyoto, Rennyo and Ryōken make their way to Yoshizaki in the Hokuriku region, hoping to find a new place to worship and teach. The film is a story about suffering opening the way to purpose.