Letter to Shimoyama（8th of 12th paragraph）
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Shan-tao, whom the Nembutsu believers regard as one of the founders of their doctrine, is included among “the living beings in this threefold world,” and yet he directly contradicts the sutra passage in which Shakyamuni declares that [as for the living beings in this threefold world] “I am the only person who can rescue and protect them,” and instead states that “not even one person in a thousand” will be saved by teachings such as those of the Lotus Sutra. That is why, in his present existence, he went mad, climbed a willow tree, and threw himself down on the hard ground. Even then he was unable to die, but for fourteen days, from the fourteenth day of the month to the twenty-seventh, he raved in his madness until death finally came to him.
Similarly, the founders of the True Word school, the Tripitaka Masters Shan-wu-wei, Chin-kang-chih, and Pu-k’ung, looked with contempt on Shakyamuni Buddha, the Dharma king and lord of teachings, who was also a father to them, and instead paid honor to Mahāvairochana, a Buddha with whom they had no such connection. Therefore Shan-wu-wei was not only berated by Yama, the king of hell, but fell into the hell of incessant suffering. If you doubt this, just look with your own eyes at the painting in the Yama Hall.80 But the stories pertaining to Chin-kang-chih and Pu-k’ung are so numerous that I will not go into them here.
Again, the Meditation Master San-chieh, also known as Hsin-hsing, of the Zen school demoted the Lotus Sutra and the other sacred teachings delivered by the Buddha in his lifetime of preaching to an inferior rank, calling them “specifically designed teachings,” and elevated to the position of honor what he called the “universal sutra,” a sutra that he himself had composed. Because he did this, though he was for a time regarded as being among the four ranks of bodhisattvas, he was challenged by a lay woman believer who upheld the teachings of the Lotus Sutra. Unable to refute her, in his present existence he changed into a huge snake and devoured dozens of his own disciples.
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Notes
80. Refuting Ryōkan and the Others reads, “The Tripitaka Master Shan-wu-wei himself, in The Annotations on the Mahāvairochana Sutra, records the fact that at that time he was bound with seven cords of iron. Moreover, in Japan these events are depicted in the Yama Hall of Daigo-ji temple [in Yamashiro Province] and the Yama Hall of Kamakura in Sagami Province” (p. 1048). The facts are not known, but most probably pictures of King Yama berating Shan-wu-wei bound with iron cords were hanging on the walls of these temples.