On Repaying Debts of Gratitude

Nichiren

Chapter27(Refuting the Miracles of Kobo)

Main Text

Question: The Great Teacher Kōbō in his Secret Key to the Heart Sutra writes: “In the spring of the ninth year of Kōnin, the empire was troubled by a great plague. Thereupon the emperor in person dipped his writing brush in gold, took a piece of dark blue paper in his hand, and wrote out a copy of the Heart Sutra in one roll. I had been appointed by the ruler to lecture on the Heart Sutra. Having compiled my explanations of its meaning, I [was delivering the lecture but] had not yet reached my concluding remarks, when those who had recovered from the plague began to fill the streets of the capital. Moreover, when night came, the sun continued to shine bright and red.

“This was certainly not the result of any virtuous observance of the precepts on the part of an ignorant person like myself, but was due rather to the power of faith manifested by the sovereign as the gold-wheel-turning king.⁹⁴ Nevertheless, those who go to pray at the shrines of the gods should recite this commentary of mine. For I was present long ago at Eagle Peak when the Buddha preached the Heart Sutra, and I personally heard him expound its profound doctrines. How, then, could I fail to understand its meaning?”

Again in the work entitled The Annotations on the Peacock Sutra, we read: “After the Great Teacher Kōbō returned from China, he desired to establish the True Word school in Japan, and representatives of all the various schools were summoned to the imperial court. But many of them had doubts about the True Word doctrine of the attaining of Buddhahood in one’s present form. The great teacher thereupon formed his hands in the wisdom mudra and faced south. Suddenly his mouth opened, and he turned into the golden-colored Buddha Mahāvairochana—that is, he reverted to his original form. In this way he demonstrated that the Buddha is present in the individual and that the individual is present in the Buddha, and that one can immediately attain Buddhahood in one’s present form. On that day, all doubts concerning the matter were completely resolved, and from that time the True Word, or Yoga,⁹⁵ school with its doctrines of secret mandalas was established.”

The same work also says: “At this time the students of the other schools all bowed to the opinion of the Great Teacher Kōbō and for the first time received instruction in the True Word doctrines, sought their benefit, and practiced them. Dōshō of the Three Treatises school, Gennin of the Dharma Characteristics school, Dōyū⁹⁶ of the Flower Garland school, and Enchō of the Tendai school were all among those who did so.”

In addition, the biography of the Great Teacher Kōbō states: “On the day when he set out by ship from China, he voiced a prayer, saying, ‘If there is a spot that is particularly suitable for the teaching of these doctrines that I have learned, may this three-pronged diamond-pounder land there!’ Then he faced in the direction of Japan and threw the diamond-pounder up into the air. It sailed far away and disappeared among the clouds. In the tenth month, he returned to Japan.”

The same work states: “He journeyed to the foot of Mount Kōya and determined to establish his place of meditation there . . . and later it was discovered that the three-pronged diamond-pounder that he had thrown out over the sea was there on the mountain.”

It is clear from these two or three incidents that the Great Teacher Kōbō was a person of inestimable power and virtue. Since he was a person of such great power, why do you say that one should not believe in his teachings, and that anyone who does so will fall into the Avīchi hell?

Answer: I, too, admire and believe in these various accomplishments of his. There are other men of old who possessed such uncanny powers. But the possession of such power does not indicate whether that person’s understanding of the Buddhist teaching is correct or not. Among the non-Buddhist believers of India there have been men who could pour all the waters of the Ganges River into their ear and keep it there for twelve years, or those who could drink the ocean dry, grasp the sun and moon in their hands, or change the disciples of Shakyamuni Buddha into oxen or sheep. But such powers only made them more arrogant than ever and caused them to create further karma to confine themselves in the sufferings of birth and death. It is men like these whom T’ien-t’ai is referring to when he says, “They seek after fame and profit and increase their illusions of thought and desire.”⁹⁷

The Chinese priest Fa-yün of Kuang-che-ssu temple could make it rain suddenly or cause flowers to bloom immediately, but Miao-lo writes of him, “Though he could bring about a response in this way, his understanding still did not accord with the truth [of the Lotus Sutra].”⁹⁸ When the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai read the Lotus Sutra, soft rain began to fall in an instant, and the Great Teacher Dengyō caused sweet rain to fall within the space of three days. However, they did not say that because of such powers their understanding of the truth coincided with that of the Buddha.

Regardless of what unusual powers the Great Teacher Kōbō may have had, he described the Lotus Sutra as a doctrine of childish theory and wrote that Shakyamuni Buddha was still in the region of darkness. Persons of wisdom and understanding should have nothing to do with such writings.

Notes

94. One of the four types of wheel-turning kings. The king who rules all the four continents surrounding Mount Sumeru.

95. Yoga (Skt), or “union,” is another name for the True Word school. Esoteric Buddhism stresses the union of the body, voice, and mind of common mortals with those of Mahāvairochana Buddha. In terms of practice, mudras represent the body, mantras, the voice, and meditation on mandalas, the mind.

96. Dōshō (799–875) first studied the Three Treatises doctrines but later became a follower of Kōbō. Gennin (818–887) first studied the Dharma Characteristics doctrines but later studied the esoteric teachings under Shinga. In 885, he became the chief priest of Tō-ji temple. Dōyū (d. 851) first studied the Dharma Characteristics teachings but later turned to the Flower Garland doctrines. He became the seventh patriarch of the Flower Garland school.

97. The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra.

98. The Annotations on “The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra.”

Lecture