Condolences on a Deceased Husband Chapter15

The rulers of Japan and the various priests and nuns are like that jealous woman. I, Nichiren, have declared that the Nembutsu, the invocation of Amida’s name, which these rulers and priests rely upon, is a practice that will condemn one to the hell of incessant suffering. I have said that True Word is the doctrine that will ruin the nation, and that the keeping of the precepts is the work of the heavenly devil. When they hear these pronouncements of mine, they count their prayer beads and grind their teeth in rage, ring their little bells while shaking their heads in anger. Though outwardly they observe the precepts, they harbor hearts of evil.

So the Sage Ryōkan of Gokuraku-ji, that “living Buddha,” hurries with petitions to the government offices to bring charges against me, the Sage Dōryū of Kenchō-ji mounts his palanquin and goes to plead with the magistrates, and the lay nuns who observe the five hundred precepts present offerings and documents of accusation. All of this has come about because they read the Lotus Sutra but do not really read it, because they hear its words but do not really hear them, because they are drunk on the sweet old sake of the assertions by Shan-tao and Hōnen that “not even one person in a thousand” can be saved, or by Kōbō and Jikaku that doctrines other than the True Word are all “mere childish theory,”³⁴ or by Bodhidharma that Zen represents a “separate transmission outside the sutras.” They have been driven mad by this sake.

To read the passage of the Lotus Sutra that says, “Among those sutras the Lotus is the foremost,”³⁵ and yet declare that the Mahāvairochana Sutra is superior to it, to assert that the Zen school represents the highest of all Buddhist teachings, that the Precepts school is worthy of true honor, that the Nembutsu is the only practice truly fitted to our capacities—what are these but the ravings of a person who is drunk on sake? They look at the stars and declare them superior to the moon, look at a stone and say it is more valuable than gold, look at the east and call it the west, the sky and call it the earth. And then on the basis of these idiocies they proceed to rage at persons who declare that the moon and gold are superior to stars and stones, who say that the east is the east and the sky is the sky. Are we to go along with such persons simply because they are numerous? Are they not merely a great gathering of idiots? How sad it is to think that all the useless men and women who base themselves upon delusions of this kind are destined to fall into hell.

In the Nirvana Sutra, the Buddha tells us that in the Latter Day of the Law, those who slander the Lotus Sutra and fall into hell will be more numerous than the dust particles of the land, while those who believe in it and attain Buddhahood will be fewer than the specks of dirt that can be placed on a fingernail. We should give careful thought to this pronouncement. Are the inhabitants of Japan to be compared in number to the specks of dirt on a fingernail? Is this one man, Nichiren, to be compared to the particles of dust in all the ten directions?