Condolences on a Deceased Husband Chapter16

But leaving that aside, I wonder what karma from a previous existence has led you to send this gift of a robe to me. Do you perhaps intend to be numbered among those who are “fewer than the specks of dirt placed on a fingernail”?

The Nirvana Sutra tells us to imagine a needle placed upright in the earth and a strong wind blowing. Then we are to imagine that under such circumstances, a thread is lowered straight down from the Brahma heaven and an attempt made to pass it through the eye of the needle. It is easier to accomplish this feat, we are told, than to encounter a votary of the Lotus Sutra in the latter age.³⁶

Again, the Lotus Sutra says that there is a turtle living at the bottom of the ocean. Once every three thousand years the turtle rises to the surface of the sea, and if he can encounter a floating piece of sandalwood with a hollow in it, he can rest himself there. But this turtle has only one eye, and the vision in that eye is distorted, so that things to the west of him appear to be in the east, and things to the east of him to be in the west. This simile indicates how difficult it is for men and women born in this evil world of the latter age to fit themselves into the “hollow” that is the Lotus Sutra and Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.³⁷

In view of these difficulties, I wonder what bond of karma from the past has inspired in your heart the determination to communicate with a person like me?

If we examine the Lotus Sutra, we find it stated that, in cases like these, Shakyamuni Buddha enters into a person and inspires such determination in that person’s heart. It is like someone who, with no particular thought in mind, drinks sake and becomes intoxicated. After he is intoxicated, a quite unexpected desire arises in his heart and he is inspired to give away his belongings to other people. Although the person has all his life been stingy and greedy and is destined for rebirth in the realm of hungry spirits, because of the effect of the sake, he is able to enter the realm of a bodhisattva.

If a jewel is placed in muddy water,³⁸ the water will become clear, and if a person gazes at the moon, his heart will be filled with nostalgia. A picture of a demon can be frightening even though we know it is not alive, and a picture of a beautiful woman can make a wife jealous even though she knows the picture cannot steal her husband away from her. If a brocade bed mat is woven with a pattern of snakes, no one will want to lie down on it, and if one’s body is overheated, one will find a warm breeze distasteful. Such is the nature of the human heart.

So when a person like yourself feels drawn in your heart toward the Lotus Sutra, I suppose it must be that, since you are a woman, the dragon king’s daughter has taken possession of you.