Letter to Shimoyama（4th of 12th paragraph）
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At this time Perceiver of the World’s Sounds and Great Power, who were foremost disciples of the Buddha Amida, acted as his aides like a set of wings, like the high ministers of the left and right, or like a pair of eyes. They accompanied Amida when he left his World of Perfect Bliss and journeyed all the way to this present world. But when Shakyamuni Buddha preached the Immeasurable Meanings Sutra, he made clear that the forty-eight vows described in the Amida and similar sutras belong to a time when he had “not yet revealed the truth.” And in the Lotus Sutra he cited Amida Buddha by name76 and stated that the doctrines associated with Amida’s name did not represent the truth.
Perceiver of the World’s Sounds and Great Power could not believe this, but Amida Buddha himself came forth to confirm it. They then realized that the lotus seats and the gesture of the pressed palms that these two bodhisattvas were to employ to welcome Nembutsu believers to the Pure Land with the nine-grade distinction, were all void of truth.
They then concluded that it was pointless for them to return to their original realm. Instead they joined the other eighty thousand or twenty thousand bodhisattvas [who had assembled at the ceremony of the Lotus Sutra], and vowed that “in their comings and goings in the sahā world,” as the “Perceiver of the World’s Sounds” chapter of the Lotus Sutra puts it, they would devote themselves assiduously to guarding and protecting the votary of the Lotus Sutra in this sahā world. They were assigned a place to dwell by Shakyamuni Buddha, a small location called Mount Potalaka in the southern part of the continent of Jambudvīpa, which is close to our country of Japan.
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Notes
76. The chapter seven of the Lotus Sutra says, “Two are Buddhas in the western region, one named Amitāyus [Amida], the other named Saving All from Worldly Suffering.”