Letter to Shimoyama（2nd of 12th paragraph）
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After making these statements, the Buddha proclaimed his true meaning, saying, “But now this threefold world is all my domain, and the living beings in it are all my children. Now this place is beset by many pains and trials. I am the only person who can rescue and protect others, but though I teach and instruct them, they do not believe or accept my teachings.”72 And he continued, “If a person . . . on seeing those who read, recite, copy, and uphold this sutra, should despise, hate, envy, or bear grudges against them, . . . When such a person’s life comes to an end he will enter the Avīchi hell.”73
The teaching expounded in these sutra passages is not of an ordinary nature. Ordinarily the sutras proclaim that persons who are guilty of the five cardinal sins or the seven cardinal sins74 will fall into the Avīchi hell. But this is not so of the Lotus Sutra. All persons living during the lifetime of the Buddha or after his passing who cling adamantly to the Amida Sutra or the other sutras expounded during the first forty and more years of the Buddha’s preaching life and refuse to accept the Lotus Sutra; persons who accept the Lotus Sutra but refuse to set aside their adherence to the earlier sutras and practice them along with the Lotus Sutra; persons who declare that the earlier sutra or sutras that they adhere to are superior to the Lotus Sutra; or persons who, though they practice the Lotus Sutra as the sutra itself directs, treat the votary of the Lotus Sutra with scorn and contempt—all such persons as these, when their present life comes to an end, will, the Buddha assures us, enter the Avīchi hell.
Although this doctrine was proclaimed by one Buddha alone, Shakyamuni, unless one is a follower of non-Buddhist teachings, one should have no doubts concerning it. In order to make clear that it is of greater weight than all the doctrines of the other sutras that the Buddha has preached, now preaches, or ever will preach, the Thus Come One Many Treasures of the land called Treasure Purity came in person all the way to this world of ours to testify to its importance. He gave his testimony to the truth that all those people who adamantly adhere to the earlier teachings of the Thus Come One Shakyamuni, as set forth in the Mahāvairochana, Amida, and other sutras, or to the Nembutsu practice, and fail to accept the Lotus Sutra that was preached later, are without doubt destined to enter the Avīchi hell.
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Notes
73. Ibid. The Chinese text of the sutra can also be read as it is translated here. The translation has been slightly changed to fit the context.