Letter to Shimoyama（6th of 12th paragraph）
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But Buddhist scholars of our latter age who fail to understand the situation, or those persons who are just beginning their practice of the Lotus Sutra, will read the Amida Sutra and recite the Nembutsu with great reverence, or will place them on the same level as the Lotus Sutra, or will recite the Amida Sutra after reciting the Lotus Sutra, regarding it as the heart of the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, or will trust in the blessings received from the Amida Sutra, hoping to apply these blessings to their rebirth in the Western Paradise. A person who acts in this fashion is comparable to a dragon who rides on a donkey, or a lion who places his trust in a fox. For the Amida Sutra may be compared to the light of the host of stars after the sun has appeared in the sky, or to little drops of dew in a time of drenching rain.
Therefore the Great Teacher Dengyō said, “On the morning when one receives the carriage drawn by a white ox, one no longer needs the other three kinds of carts; on the evening when one succeeds to the family fortune, what reason is there to go on clearing away excrement? Hence the Lotus Sutra says, ‘Honestly discarding expedient means, I will preach only the unsurpassed way.’”77 And he also said that when the sun rises, the stars fade from sight, and that when true skill appears, clumsiness becomes known.78
Once the Lotus Sutra had made its appearance, all the other sutras preached in the past, at present, or in the future were needless to say cast aside. Even if one were to practice them, they would serve merely as attendants and retainers to the Lotus Sutra.
And yet now the people of Japan firmly believe in Tao-ch’o’s assertion that “not a single person has ever attained Buddhahood”79 through the Lotus Sutra, in Shan-tao’s statement that “not even one person in a thousand” can be saved by it, in Eshin’s own introduction to his Essentials of Rebirth in the Pure Land or Yōkan’s Ten Conditions for Rebirth in the Pure Land, or in Hōnen’s command to “discard, close, ignore, and abandon” the other sutras. Hence some of them discard the Lotus Sutra and devote themselves entirely to the Nembutsu, while others make the Nembutsu their basic practice but supplement it with observance of the Lotus Sutra. Some view the Nembutsu of the Buddha Amida and the Lotus Sutra as standing side by side, giving heed to both of them and practicing them simultaneously, while others regard the Nembutsu and the Lotus Sutra as merely two different names for a single truth and carry out their practice accordingly.
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