On Consecrating an Image of ShakyamuniBuddha Made by Shijō Kingo

Background

Nichiren Daishonin wrote this letter at Minobu to Shijō Kingo in 1276, when he was fifty-five. Evidently Shijō Kingo had made a wooden image of Shakyamuni Buddha for the benefit of his deceased parents and asked the Daishonin to perform the eye-opening ceremony to consecrate it. This letter is the Daishonin’s reply.

In the opening section, the Daishonin says that only when the Lotus Sutra is used at the eye-opening ceremony to consecrate a Buddha image will that image become endowed with the five types of vision and the Buddha’s three bodies.

Making Buddha images was a widespread practice, and, in an age when most people revered the Buddha Amida, the Daishonin was tolerant of the making of images of Shakyamuni as an act leading toward correct understanding.

A similar attitude also underlies the next section of the letter, in which the Daishonin comments on Shijō Kingo’s hereditary practice of worshiping the sun deity at certain times of the year. He explains here that the power and workings of the sun deity ultimately derive from the Buddhist Law, which the Lotus Sutra expounds.

The Daishonin then praises Shijō Kingo for his filial devotion and points out that, by providing him with a livelihood, Lord Ema has enabled him to discharge his filial duties and to make offerings to the votary of the Lotus Sutra. It would be wrong, the Daishonin says, to lightly abandon someone to whom one is so deeply indebted. At this time Shijō Kingo was in physical danger due to the animosity of his fellow samurai, and the Daishonin warns him to be on guard.