Jissō-ji Temple Chapter2
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The word “wonderful” in the Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law has two meanings. One is comparative myō, or wonderful,7 which indicates refuting the rough teachings and revealing the wonderful teaching. The other is absolute myō, which indicates opening up the rough teachings and merging them in the wonderful teaching.
The sutras preached prior to the Lotus Sutra, as well as those preached after it, to a certain extent touch upon refuting the rough teachings and revealing the wonderful teaching. But there is nothing in them about opening up the rough teachings and merging them in the wonderful teaching. Despite this fact, Buddhist teachers who rely upon one or another of these sutras insist that they contain both types of myō, that which refutes the rough teachings and reveals the wonderful teaching and that which opens up the rough teachings and merges them in the wonderful teaching. Either they steal the wisdom of the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai [in order to support their case], or they behave like private individuals who attempt to lay down rules for the entire nation. Though they claim that such sutras contain the opening up of the rough teachings, what they refer to can hardly be called anything but the refutation of such teachings. This is particularly true in the case of those I mentioned earlier who adhere exclusively to the provisional teachings or who adhere exclusively to the true teaching.
But people like this Āchārya Owari fail to recognize their own faults, and in their jealousy of others they believe that the huge mountain is turning around when it is only their own eyes that are spinning.
To first use the true teaching to refute the provisional teachings, and then to sever people’s attachment to the provisional teachings and lead them to the true teaching—this is the constant procedure of Shakyamuni, Many Treasures, and the Buddhas of the ten directions. If one insists that those who use the true teaching to refute the provisional teachings are blind to the truth, then was Shakyamuni blind to the truth? Were T’ien-t’ai and Dengyō teachers blind to the truth? Such an assertion is nothing short of laughable!
As for the situation at Shijūku-in temple, such men as its superintendent are persons of no understanding who are fearful of me, and Odaichi-bō and the others also do us harm. This is a sign that the erroneous teachings of these parties will before long be wiped out.
When the roots are laid bare, the branches will wither, and when the spring dries up, the river will cease to flow.8 This is no empty saying. For four hundred years and more the great offence of slandering the Lotus Sutra committed by the three great teachers, Kōbō, Jikaku, and Chishō, has remained hidden, but now its roots have been laid bare and its branches will wither. I, Nichiren, have now made the facts clear. The non-Buddhist leader Ulūka turned himself into a stone, and remained a stone for several hundred years. But when Bodhisattva Dignāga berated him, the stone turned to water. Ashvaghosha caused the stupa built by Nirgrantha Jnātaputra to collapse.9 This is what is meant by the saying “Touch a sleeping lion and rouse its anger.”
Nichiren
The sixteenth day of the first month in the fourth year of Kenji [1278]
Reply to the priest Buzen-kō of Jissō-ji in Suruga Province
Background
This letter was written in reply to New Year’s greetings from the priest Buzen-kō, also called Buzen-bō, of Jissō-ji temple. Buzen-bō had apparently informed Nichiren Daishonin of criticism aimed at him and his followers by Āchārya Owari, another priest of Jissō-ji. The Daishonin’s reply, written from Minobu, is dated the sixteenth day of the first month in 1278.
It is thought that Buzen-bō became a follower of the Daishonin through the efforts of Nikkō, but few details are available. According to Buzen-bō, Āchārya Owari was claiming that the Daishonin’s propagation efforts were contrary to the intent of T’ien-t’ai’s work The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra.
In answer, the Daishonin asserts that Owari is clearly wrong and that to use the true teaching to refute the provisional teachings, and then to sever people’s attachment to those teachings and lead them to the true teaching, is the regular procedure of the Buddhas. He points out that if this procedure is incorrect, then Shakyamuni Buddha and the Great Teachers T’ien-t’ai and Dengyō must also have been in error.
In the last part of this letter, he notes that attempts by priests of Shijūku-in, a temple nearby Jissō-ji, to discredit the Daishonin and his followers signal the decline of the mistaken teachings they represent.
Notes
7. The terms “comparative myō” and “absolute myō” indicate two contrasting perspectives that highlight the profundity of the Lotus Sutra. Comparative myō means that the Lotus Sutra is wonderful because, in comparison with all other teachings, it is superior. Absolute myō means that the Lotus Sutra cannot be compared with any other teaching because it encompasses and integrates all other teachings; no teaching exists outside it, and thus none can be called either superior or inferior to it. From this viewpoint, all teachings express various aspects of the ultimate truth.
8. This statement is found in Great Concentration and Insight.
9. A similar story appears in the section about Ashvaghosha in A History of the Buddha’s Successors. Once when King Kanishka happened to pass by a non-Buddhist stupa adorned with seven kinds of treasures, he mistook it for a stupa of the Buddha and prayed there, whereupon the stupa collapsed. The king’s retainers dug up the ground and found the remains of Nirgrantha Jnātaputra, one of the six non-Buddhist teachers and the founder of Jainism. The Daishonin says that Ashvaghosha was the one who caused the stupa to collapse, perhaps because Ashvaghosha propagated Buddhism under the patronage of King Kanishka.