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Reply to the Followers
Your messenger, who left on the nineteenth
day of the third month, arrived here with your letter at
the Hour of the Dog (around 8:00 P.M.) on the twenty-first.
Now Nichiren’s lifelong prayer and desire will be achieved
in an instant. And this fits the Buddha’s prediction
regarding the fifth five hundred years, just as one half
of a tally matches the other. In the end, if the slanderous
proponents of the Shingon, Zen and other sects are summoned
and brought together to confront me, and right and wrong
are decided, the people of Japan will all become my disciples
and followers. Of my disciples, the priests will become
teachers to the emperors and retired emperors, while the
lay believers will be ranked as the ministers of the left
and right. And moreover, everyone in the entire land of
Jambudvipa will come to revere this teaching. What happiness!
What happiness!
Nichiren
The twenty-first day of the third month
in the first year of Koan (1278)
Reply to the Followers
Major Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, Vol. 7.
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