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The Votary of the Lotus Sutra Will Meet Persecution
To Kawanobe and his people, Priest Yamato
Ajari and the others, and all of my disciples and my followers
Saburo Zaemon-no-jo and Toki
Respectfully, Nichiren
Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu were both scholars
of a thousand works. However, they expounded only the provisional
Mahayana teachings. Though they understood [the meaning of]
the Lotus Sutra in their hearts, they did not declare it in
words. (An oral transmission exists concerning this.) T'ien-t'ai
and Dengyo went so far as to expound it, but they left unrevealed
the object of worship of the essential teaching, the four
bodhisattvas, the high sanctuary and the five characters of
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Their reasons were, first, because the
Buddha had not transferred these teachings to any of them,
and second, because the time was not ripe and the people's
capacity had not yet matured. Now the time has arrived, and
the four bodhisattvas will surely make their advent. I, Nichiren,
was the first to understand this. It is said that the flight
of a bluebird heralds the appearance of the Queen Mother of
the West, and that the singing of a magpie foretells the arrival
of a guest. [In the same way, there are omens announcing the
advent of the four bodhisattvas.] All those who consider themselves
my disciples should know that now is the time for the four
bodhisattvas to appear. Therefore, even if it should cost
your lives, you must never discard your faith.
Toki, Saburo Zaemon-no-jo, Kawanobe, Yamato
Ajari and the rest of you, gentlemen and priests, should read
this letter to one another and listen. In this defiled age,
you should always talk together and never cease to pray for
your next life.
The fourth volume of the Lotus Sutra states:
"Since hatred and jealousy [toward this sutra] abound
even during the lifetime of the Buddha, how much worse will
it be in the world after his passing!" The fifth volume
says: "The people will resent [the Lotus Sutra] and find
it extremely difficult to believe." The thirty-eighth
volume of the Nirvana Sutra states, "At that time there
were countless Brahmans...Their hearts gave rise to fury."
It also says, "At that time there were a countless number
of Brahmans who plotted together and went in a body to King
Ajatashatru of Magadha and said, 'At present there is a man
of incomparable wickedness, a monk called Gautama. O King,
you have never examined him, and this arouses much fear in
us. All sorts of evil persons hoping to gain profit and alms,
have flocked to him and become his followers. [They do not
practice goodness, but instead use the power of spells and
magic to win over men like] Mahakashyapa, Shariputra and Maudgalyayana.'"
This well illustrates the meaning of the passage: "Since
hatred and jealousy abound even during the lifetime of the
Buddha..."
The Monk of Great Virtue Tokuichi reviled
the Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai Chih-che, saying: "See here,
Chih-i, whose disciple are you? With a tongue less than three
inches long you slander the teachings that come from the Buddha's
long, broad tongue!" Tokuichi also said, "Surely
he [T'ien-t'ai] must be perverse and insane." More than
three hundred priests, including the high-ranking prelates
of the seven major temples in Nara such as the Supervisor
of Monks Gomyo and the Discipline Master Keishin, hurled abuse
at the Great Teacher Dengyo, saying, "Just as in the
Western Hsia land of Central Asia there was an evil Brahman
named Devil Eloquence who deceived people, now in this eastern
realm of Japan there is a shave-pated monk who spits out crafty
words. Demons like this will attract to themselves those who
are of like mind and will deceive and mislead the world."
However, Dengyo states in his Hokke Shuku:
"Shakyamuni taught that the shallow is easy to embrace,
but the profound is difficult. To discard the shallow and
seek the profound requires courage. The Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai
trusted and obeyed Shakyamuni Buddha and worked to uphold
the Hokke [Lotus] school, spreading its teachings throughout
China. We of Mount Hiei inherited the doctrine from T'ien-t'ai
and work to uphold the Hokke school and to disseminate its
teachings throughout Japan."
During the entire lifetime of the Buddha as
well as the two thousand years of the Former and Middle Days
of the Law that followed after his death, there were only
three votaries of the Lotus Sutra. They were Shakyamuni Buddha
himself, T'ien-t'ai and Dengyo. By contrast, Shan-wu-wei and
Pu-k'ung of the Shingon school, Tu-shun and Chih-yen of the
Kegon school, and the teachers of the Sanron and Hosso schools
all interpreted the sentences of the sutra of the true teaching
so that they accorded with the meaning of the provisional
sutras. Scholars such as Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu inwardly
grasped [the meaning of] the Lotus Sutra but did not outwardly
speak of it. Not even the four ranks of saints in the Former
Day of the Law could compare with T'ien-t'ai and Dengyo when
it came to propagating the Lotus Sutra just as it teaches.
If the Buddha's prediction is true, there
must be a votary of the Lotus Sutra in the Latter Day of the
Law, and the great difficulties that he encounters will surpass
those that occurred during the Buddha's lifetime. The Buddha
himself underwent nine great ordeals. He was slandered by
Sundari; he was offered stinking rice gruel; he was forced
to eat horse fodder; King Virudhaka massacred the greater
part of the Shakya clan; he went begging but his bowl remained
empty; Chinchamanavika slandered him; Devadatta dropped a
boulder from atop a hill [in an attempt to kill him]; and
the cold wind forced him to seek robes for protection. And
in addition, he was denounced by all the Brahmans, as I mentioned
earlier. If we go by the prediction in the sutra [that hatred
and jealousy will be "much worse" after the Buddha's
passing], then T'ien-t'ai and Dengyo did not fulfill the Buddha's
prophecy. In view of all this, it must be that a votary of
the Lotus Sutra will appear at the beginning of the Latter
Day of the Law, just as the Buddha predicted.
In any event, on the seventh day of the twelfth
month in the tenth year of Bun'ei (1273), a letter from Hojo
Nobutoki, the former governor of Musashi Province, reached
the province of Sado. The letter, to which he had set his
seal, read:
We have heard a rumor that Nichiren,
the priest exiled to Sado, is leading his disciples in plotting
some evil action. His scheme is nothing short of outrageous.
From now on, those who follow that priest are to be severely
punished. Should there be those who nevertheless still violate
this prohibition, their names are to be reported. This is
an official order.
Priest Kan'e
The seventh day of the twelfth month
in the tenth year of Bun'ei.
To Echi-no Rokuro Zaemon-no-jo
This letter reads that I am "plotting
some evil action." Brahmans slandered the Buddha, saying
that Gautama was an evil man. I, Nichiren, have personally
suffered each of the nine great ordeals. Among them, Virudhaka
massacring the Shakya clan, going begging but being left with
an empty bowl, and being forced to seek robes for protection
from the cold wind have been great trials far surpassing those
that occurred during the Buddha's lifetime. These are hardships
that T'ien-t'ai and Dengyo never met. Truly you should know
that, adding Nichiren to the other three, there is now a fourth
votary of the Lotus Sutra, who has appeared in the Latter
Day of the Law. How glad I am to fulfill the words of prophecy
from the sutra: "How much worse will it be in the world
after his passing!" How sad I feel that all the people
of this country will fall into the Avichi Hell! I will not
go into detail here, or this letter will become too involved.
You should think this through seriously for yourselves.
Nichiren
The fourteenth day of the first month in the
eleventh year of Bun'ei (1274), cyclical sign kinoe-inu
Postscript: All my disciples and followers
should read and listen to this letter. Those who are in earnest
should discuss it with one another.
Major Writings of Nichiren Daishonin,
Vol. 6, page 77.
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