On Repaying Debts of Gratitude

Nichiren

Chapter16(Refuting the Great Teacher Jikaku and the Great Teacher Chishō)

Main Text

These two men, Jikaku and Chishō, as we have seen, were disciples of Dengyō and Gishin, and in addition they journeyed to China and met eminent teachers of the T’ien-t’ai and True Word schools there. And yet it appears that they could not make up their minds as to the relative merit of these two schools. Sometimes they declared that the True Word is superior, sometimes that the Lotus is superior, and sometimes they said that the two are equal in terms of principle, but that the True Word is superior in terms of practice. Meanwhile, an edict warned that anyone attempting to argue the relative merit of the two schools would be judged guilty of violating the imperial decree.

These pronouncements of Jikaku and Chishō were clearly inconsistent, and it would appear that the followers of the other schools placed no trust in them whatsoever. Nevertheless, an imperial edict, as we have seen, states that the two schools are equal, putting this forward as the doctrine of the Tendai patriarch, the Great Teacher Dengyō. But in what work of the Great Teacher Dengyō is this view to be found? This is something that must be looked into carefully.

For me, Nichiren, to be challenging Jikaku and Chishō because of doubts over a matter pertaining to the Great Teacher Dengyō is like a person confronting his parents and arguing with them over who is older, or a person confronting the god of the sun and claiming that his own eyes shine more brilliantly. Nevertheless, those who would defend the views of Jikaku and Chishō must produce some sort of clear scriptural evidence to support their case. Only if they do so can they hope to gain credence for such views.

The Tripitaka Master Hsüan-tsang had been to India and seen a copy of The Great Commentary on the Abhidharma there, but that did not prevent him from being criticized by the Dharma Teacher Fa-pao, who had never been to India. The Tripitaka Master Dharmaraksha saw a copy of the Lotus Sutra in India, but that did not prevent a man of China⁴⁷ from pointing out that the “Entrustment” chapter was out of place in the translation he made of it, though that man had never seen the original text.

In like manner, though Jikaku may have studied under the Great Teacher Dengyō and received instruction from him, and though Chishō may have obtained the oral transmission from the Reverend Gishin, if they go against the teachings recorded in the authentic writings of Dengyō and Gishin, then how can they help but incur suspicion?

Clarification of the Schools by the Great Teacher Dengyō is the most secret of his writings. In the preface to that work, he writes: “The True Word school of Buddhism that has recently been brought to Japan deliberately obscures how its transmission was falsified in the recording [by I-hsing, who was deceived by Shan-wu-wei],⁴⁸ while the Flower Garland school that was introduced earlier attempts to disguise the fact that it was influenced by the doctrines of T’ien-t’ai.⁴⁹ The Three Treatises school, which is so infatuated with the concept of emptiness, has forgotten Chia-hsiang’s humiliation,⁵⁰ and conceals the fact that he was completely won over to the T’ien-t’ai teachings by Chang-an. The Dharma Characteristics school, which clings to the concept of being,⁵¹ denies that its leader Chih-chou was converted to the teachings of the T’ien-t’ai school, and that Liang-pi used those teachings in interpreting the Benevolent Kings Sutra.⁵² . . . Now with all due circumspection I have written Clarification of the Schools in one volume to present to wise men of later times who share my convictions. The time is the reign of the fifty-second sovereign of Japan, the seventh year of the Kōnin era (816), the year hinoe-saru.”⁵³

Farther on, in the main text of the same work, it reads, “There was an eminent monk in India who had heard that the teachings of the priest T’ien-t’ai of T’ang China were most suitable for distinguishing correct from incorrect doctrines, and expressed a longing to become better acquainted with them.”

It continues, “Does this not mean that Buddhism has been lost in India, the country of its origin, and must now be sought in the surrounding regions? But even in China there are few people who recognize the greatness of T’ien-t’ai’s teachings. They are like the people of Lu.”⁵⁴

This work, as may be seen from these quotations, criticizes the Dharma Characteristics, Three Treatises, Flower Garland, and True Word schools. Now if the Great Teacher Dengyō believed that the Tendai and True Word schools are of equal worth, then why would he criticize the latter? Furthermore, he compares the Tripitaka Master Pu-k’ung and others to the ignorant people of the state of Lu. If he really approved of the True Word teachings as formulated by Shan-wu-wei, Chin-kang-chih, and Pu-k’ung, then why would he speak ill of these men by comparing them to the people of Lu? And if the True Word teachings of India were identical with or superior to the teachings of the T’ien-t’ai school, then why did the eminent monk of India question Pu-k’ung about them and say that the correct teaching had been lost in India?

Be that as it may, these two men, Jikaku and Chishō, in words claimed to be the disciples of the Great Teacher Dengyō, but at heart they were not. That is why Dengyō wrote in the preface to his work, “Now with all due circumspection I have written Clarification of the Schools in one volume to present to wise men of later times who share my convictions.” The words “who share my convictions” mean in effect “those who share my conviction that the True Word school is inferior to the Tendai school.”

In the edict quoted earlier, which Chishō himself had requested, it says that they “do nothing but turn against the teachings of the patriarch [Dengyō] and instead follow the prejudices and inclinations of their own hearts.” It also states, “On the path inherited from the master, one cannot neglect either the concentration and insight or the True Word teachings.” But if we are to accept the words of the edict, we would have to say that Jikaku and Chishō themselves are the ones who have turned against their teacher Dengyō. It may be impertinent that I make charges of this kind, but if I do not do so, then the relative merit of the Mahāvairochana and Lotus sutras will continue to be misunderstood as it is at present. That is why I risk my life to bring these charges.

[Since they themselves were mistaken,] it is altogether natural that these two men, Jikaku and Chishō, did not venture to accuse the Great Teacher Kōbō of doctrinal error. Instead of wasting all those supplies and making work for other people by insisting upon traveling all the way to China, they should have made a more careful and thorough study of the doctrines of the Great Teacher Dengyō, who was their own teacher!

It was only in the time of the first three leaders of the Tendai school, the Great Teacher Dengyō, the Reverend Gishin, and the Great Teacher Enchō, that the correct doctrine was taught on Mount Hiei. Thereafter the chief priests of the Tendai school were transformed into True Word leaders. The area continued to be called a Tendai Mountain, but was presided over by a True Word master.

The great teachers Jikaku and Chishō, as we have seen, contradict the passage in the Lotus Sutra concerning all the sutras that the Buddha “has preached, now preaches, and will preach.”⁵⁵ And having contradicted that passage of the scripture, are they not to be regarded as the archenemies of Shakyamuni, Many Treasures, and the Buddhas of the ten directions? One might have thought that the Great Teacher Kōbō was the foremost slanderer of the Law, but Jikaku and Chishō taught errors that far surpass those of Kōbō.

When an error is as far from the truth as water is from fire or the earth from the sky, people will refuse to believe it, and such errors will have no chance of acceptance. Thus, for example, the doctrines of the Great Teacher Kōbō are so full of such errors that even his own disciples would not accept them. As for the practices and ceremonies of the school, they accepted his instructions, but they could not bring themselves to accept his doctrines concerning the relative merits of the sutras. Therefore, they substituted for them the doctrines of Shan-wu-wei, Chin-kang-chih, Pu-k’ung, Jikaku, and Chishō. It is the doctrine of Jikaku and Chishō that declares the True Word and Tendai schools to be identical in principle, and all the people have accepted that declaration.

Recognizing this situation, even followers of the Tendai school, hoping to be asked to perform the eye-opening ceremony for the consecration of painted or wooden Buddhist images, adopt the mudras and mantras in which the True Word school is believed to excel. Thus in effect the whole of Japan goes over to the True Word school, and the Tendai school is left without a single follower.

A monk and a nun, a black object and a dark blue object, are so easily confused that a person with poor eyesight might well mistake one for the other. But a priest and a layman, or a white object and a red object, even a person with poor eyesight would never confuse, much less someone with good eyes. Now the doctrines of Jikaku and Chishō are as easy to mistake for the truth as a monk is for a nun, or a black object for a dark blue one. Therefore, even wise men are led astray, and the ignorant fall into error. As a result, for the past four hundred and more years, on Mount Hiei, at Onjō-ji and Tō-ji, in Nara, the five provinces surrounding the capital, the seven outlying regions,⁵⁶ and indeed throughout the whole land of Japan, all the people have been turned into slanderers of the Law.

 

Notes

47. “A man of China” refers to Miao-lo, who stated in his Annotations on “The Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra” that Kumārajīva’s placement of the “Entrustment” chapter is correct.

48. In The Annotations on the Mahāvairochana Sutra given by Shan-wu-wei, the founder of the esoteric True Word school in China, I-hsing appropriated the T’ien-t’ai doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life and interpreted it as p.742belonging to the True Word teachings.

49. Fa-tsang established a classification of the Buddhist sutras, dividing them into five groups according to their level of teaching: the Hinayana teaching, the elementary Mahayana teaching, the final Mahayana teaching, the sudden teaching, and the perfect teaching. This system of the five teachings was modeled on T’ien-t’ai’s classification of the five periods.

50. While giving a lecture, Chia-hsiang was criticized by Fa-sheng, a seventeen-year-old student of the T’ien-t’ai school.

51. The Dharma Characteristics doctrine maintains that all dharmas, or phenomena, arise from the ālaya-consciousness and have actual existence. Being preoccupied with the characteristics of the dharmas, among the three truths, it emphasizes only temporary existence.

52. Chih-chou (678–733) was the third patriarch of the Dharma Characteristics school, who lived in P’u-yang and wrote a commentary on the Brahmā Net Sutra on the basis of T’ien-t’ai’s teachings. Liang-pi of Ch’ing-lung-ssu temple interpreted the Benevolent Kings Sutra, the concluding sutra to the Wisdom sutras, following T’ien-t’ai’s Annotations on the sutra.

53. The wording of the Japanese text has been expanded here.

54. This is actually Miao-lo’s remark from his On “The Words and Phrases,” which Dengyō quotes in his Clarification of the Schools Based on T’ien-t’ai’s Doctrine. “Lu” in this passage is Confucius’s native state in China. The people of Lu are said to have been unaware of the greatness of Confucius.

55. Lotus Sutra, chap. 10.

56. The five provinces are Yamashiro, Yamato, Kawachi, Izumi, and Settsu. The seven outlying regions are Tōkaidō, Tōsandō, Hokurikudō, San’indō, San’yōdō, Nankaidō, and Saikaidō.

 

Lecture

 

These Pronouncements of Jikaku and Chishō were Clearly Inconsistent

This chapter clarifies the errors of Jikaku and Chisho, who turned against their original teacher, the Great Teacher Dengyo, and refutes their sin of slandering the Law.

“These [claims] may all be termed ‘self-contradiction’ (jigo-so’i).” Some claim that the Mantra (Esoteric) teachings are superior; others claim the Lotus Sutra is superior; still others claim the doctrine of “equality in principle, superiority in practice” (ri-do ji-sho). Furthermore, the Imperial Decree forbids anyone from debating the superiority of the two schools, labeling such people as “violators of the Imperial Will.” Because their views on the superiority of the Mantra and the Lotus teachings are so inconsistent, they are judged as being in a state of self-contradiction.

While Jikaku did not explicitly say the Lotus Sutra is superior, it was Chisho who established that claim; however, in this context, the critique is applied to both collectively.

The Tokai-sho states: “Question: Regarding the superiority or equality of the Mantra and Tiantai schools, how many points of disagreement are there? Answer: There are four points of disagreement:

1. Mantra is superior to Tiantai in both principle and practice: This is the view of Kobo (Kukai) and Chisho. Chisho’s commentary states that the ‘Three Contemplations’ and ‘One-Mind’ of Nanyue (Huisi) originate from the principle of ‘A-ji Honku’ (The Unborn Nature of the letter A). He argues that the Esoteric teachings of the Three Mysteries (Sanmitsu) secretly assist the Perfect Teaching of the One Reality. By defining the Esoteric as the ‘source’ and Tiantai as the ‘product,’ he implies Tiantai is inferior in both principle and practice.

2. Superiority in practice, equality in principle: The Esoteric is superior in ‘concrete practice’ (ji), but both schools are equal in ‘theoretical principle’ (ri). This is the view of Jikaku, Godain, and Tosotsu.

3. Absolute equality in both principle and practice: This is the view of the Great Teacher Dengyo. His commentary states that the essence of Mantra and Shikan (Tiantai meditation) is one. Therefore, both are propagated on one mountain. There is no difference between the ‘three actions’ (san-go) of the body, mouth, and mind in the enlightenment of the Lotus Sutra and the practice of the Three Mysteries.

4. The superiority of Tiantai over Mantra: This is a specific oral tradition based on the ‘Fourfold Secret Interpretation’ (Shiju Hishaku).”

“However, the equality of the two schools was the view of the late teacher Dengyo…” The main text asks, “But in what work of the Great Teacher Dengyō is this view to be found? ” implying that Dengyo never actually wrote that the Lotus and Mantra teachings are equal.

However, among Dengyo’s writings, passages stating the two are equal do exist. For instance, in the Gozu-ketsu, it says: “Though the Great Path differs, the Mystery is one.” In the Gakusho-shiki, it says: “Shikan and Mantra are like the two wings of a bird or the two wheels of a carriage.” Why, then, does this treatise claim Dengyo did not have a text asserting “equality”?

It is because such statements are merely “provisional/secondary” (bo-gi) interpretations based on a general comparison of the teachings. They are not his “true/ultimate” intent (sho-i) based on a rigorous re-evaluation of the sutras. This is the same logic as saying, “The ‘Mystic’ (Myo) of this sutra and that sutra are the same in name, but they differ in whether they contain ‘expedient means’ (hoben).” Dengyo’s ultimate position is clear from the following facts:

1. He did not name his school “Mantra,” but called it the “Tiantai Lotus School.”

2. In the Shugo-shoko, he designated the Dainichi Sutra as a “supporting” sutra, not the primary one.

3. In the Ehyo-shu, he refuted the Mantra teachings.

4. He cited the Ki-ju to label the founder of Mantra as a “person of Lu” (an unlearned person).

5. He recorded the story of Ganko to the same effect.

These points prove that Dengyo believed in the superiority of the Lotus Sutra over the Mantra teachings. He practiced the Esoteric rituals on Mount Hiei only as a “means to remove obstacles” (jo-sho hoben) for the sake of the people in an evil age.

Clarification of the Schools by the Great Teacher Dengyō

This section refutes the error of contradicting the sacred texts. The Ehyo-shu (Collection of Dependencies) clarifies that all other Buddhist sects actually depend on the Tiantai school to establish their own doctrines. High Priest Nikkan stated: “The intent of this preface is to highlight how the founders of other schools depended on Tiantai, thereby refuting the biased attachments of their later disciples.”

Whether it is the Mantra, Kegon, Sanron, or Hosso schools—which once led the intellectual and political world—they all rely on “pre-Lotus” provisional sutras that Shakyamuni himself refuted as “not yet revealing the truth.” Therefore, there is a difference as vast as heaven and earth between them and the Tiantai Lotus school.

Today, only the Soka Gakkai is the orthodox and legitimate lineage of Buddhism. False sects calling themselves “Nichiren-shu,” or “thieves of the Law” like Rissho Kosei-kai, merely imitate the Soka Gakkai and exploit the ignorance of the masses for self-interest.

The Path Inherited from the Master

“On the path inherited from the master, one cannot neglect either the concentration and insight or the True Word teachings.“ One must choose the Correct Law and correct teacher to achieve Buddhahood in this lifetime. Believers in false laws will fall into the Great Citadel of the Hell of Incessant Suffering.

“On the path inherited from the master, one cannot neglect either the concentration and insight or the True Word teachings.” “Teacher” (shi) refers to the master; “Disciple” (shi/shitsu) refers to the one who receives the teaching. Without this bond, one cannot attain enlightenment. The relationship between Nichiren Daishonin and Nikko Shonin is the perfect example of this path. Of the six senior priests, only Nikko Shonin understood the Daishonin’s Buddhism perfectly and revered him as the True Buddha. The others retreated and turned against their teacher because they lacked faith. In the Gakkai, we must never allow anyone to become like the five senior priests.

Our Gakkai’s faith in the Gohonzon—the only transmission from the Daishonin and Nikko Shonin—is the true practice of the way of teacher and disciple. Sects that practice hereditary succession (passing leadership to children) cannot be called Buddhism; they are merely “hungry spirits” (gaki) wearing the mask of Buddhism for profit.

 

 

Chapter17(Sutras and Commentaries on the Supremacy of the Lotus Sutra)

Main Text

In the fifth volume of the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha states, “Manjushrī, this Lotus Sutra is the secret storehouse of the Buddhas, the Thus Come Ones. Among the sutras, it holds the highest place.”

If this passage of the scripture is to be believed, then the Lotus Sutra must represent the correct teaching that dwells supreme above the Mahāvairochana and all the numerous other sutras. How then, one wonders, would Shan-wu-wei, Chin-kang-chih, Pu-k’ung, Kōbō, Jikaku, and Chishō interpret this passage in the sutra and reconcile it with their beliefs?

Again, the seventh volume of the Lotus Sutra states, “A person who can accept and uphold this sutra is likewise foremost among all living beings.”⁵⁷ If this passage of the sutra is to be believed, then the votary of the Lotus Sutra must be like the great sea as compared to the various rivers and streams, like Mount Sumeru among the host of mountains, like the god of the moon amid the multitude of stars, like the great god of the sun amid the other shining lights, like the wheel-turning kings, like the lord Shakra, and like the great king Brahmā among all various heavenly kings.

The Great Teacher Dengyō in his work entitled The Outstanding Principles of the Lotus Sutra writes, “This sutra likewise is foremost among all the sutra teachings . . . A person who can accept and uphold this sutra is likewise foremost among all living beings.”

After quoting this passage from the Lotus Sutra, Dengyō notes a passage from the work entitled The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra by T’ien-t’ai that interprets the same passage of scripture, and explains its meaning as follows: “One should understand that the sutras on which the other schools base their teachings are not foremost among the sutras, and those people who can uphold such sutras are not foremost among the multitude. But the Lotus Sutra, which is upheld by the Tendai Lotus school, is the foremost of all the sutras, and therefore those who can uphold the Lotus are foremost among living beings. This is borne out by the words of the Buddha himself. How could it be mere self-praise?”

Later in the work just mentioned, Dengyō says, “Detailed explanations concerning how the various schools base their teachings upon the T’ien-t’ai doctrine are given in a separate work.” Clarification of the Schools, referred to as the separate work, states: “Now the founder of our school, the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai, preached the Lotus Sutra and interpreted the Lotus Sutra in a way that placed him far above the crowd; in all of China, he stood alone. One should clearly understand that he was a messenger of the Thus Come One. Those who praise him will receive blessings that will pile up as high as Mount Calm and Bright, while those who slander him will be committing a fault that will condemn them to the hell of incessant suffering.”

 

Notes

57. Lotus Sutra, chap. 23.

 

Lecture

The Scriptural Proof of Superiority

From this chapter onwards, the text clarifies the correct propagation of Nichiren Daishonin. It begins by citing scriptural passages stating that the Lotus Sutra is the supreme among all sutras, followed by the commentaries of T’ien-t’ai and Dengyo.

The passage from the fifth scroll of the Lotus Sutra, “This Lotus Sutra is the secret storehouse of the Buddhas, the Thus Come Ones. Among the sutras, it holds the highest place.” is found in the Peaceful Practices chapter (Chapter 14).

The next citation, from the seventh scroll of the Lotus Sutra, comes from the Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King chapter (Chapter 23). It is the eighth of the “Ten Metaphors”—specifically the metaphor of the Pratyekabuddha (the Four Fruits).

In the Hokke Shuku (The Outstanding Principles of the Lotus Sutra), the Great Teacher Dengyo cites the entire passage of the eighth metaphor, which describes both the superiority of the “Law being upheld” and the “person who upholds it.” Why, then, does this treatise cite the Peaceful Practices chapter instead of the passage on the superiority of the Law from the Medicine King chapter?

High Priest Nikkan Shonin answers this in his Mondan (Commentaries):

“However, inferring the original intent, it is likely cited specifically to refute the Shingon (True Word) sect. There are two meanings here:

1. That sect designates the Mahavairocana Sutra (Dainichi-kyo) as ‘secret.’ Shakyamuni designated the Lotus Sutra specifically as ‘secret,’ hence the sutra says, ‘secret storehouse.’ (Question: If so, is their sutra not secret? Answer: Theirs is ‘hidden/obscure’ but not the ‘fine/subtle secret’ of the truth.)

2. That sect regards the Diamond Crown Sutra (Kongochō-kyo) as the summit of all sutras. Shakyamuni correctly designates the Lotus Sutra as the summit of all sutras. Hence it says, ‘among all sutras, it sits at the very top.'”

 

The Great Teacher Dengyō in his work entitled The Outstanding Principles of the Lotus Sutra writes,

The text of the eighth metaphor in The Outstanding Principles of the Lotus Sutra(Hokke Shuku) is as follows:

“It also says: Just as among all ordinary mortals, the Stream-winner, the Once-returner, the Non-returner, the Arhat, and the Pratyekabuddha are the foremost, so it is with this sutra. Among all the sutras preached by the Thus Come Ones, preached by bodhisattvas, or preached by voice-hearers, it is the foremost. So is the person who can accept and uphold this classic; among all living beings, that person is the foremost.”

T’ien-t’ai’s Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra (Hokke Gengi) states:

“Like the five kinds of Buddha’s disciples, [the Pratyekabuddha] is foremost among mortals. Or, like one who extracts living beings and leads them to Nirvana. It is like the Bodhisattva who dwells above those of the stage of ‘Learning and No Learning.’ The current Sutra [Lotus Sutra] extracts living beings and places them above the Bodhisattvas of the expedient teachings. It equates to becoming the Dharma King; it is the absolute foremost.”

One must realize that the sutras relied upon by other schools are not yet the “absolute foremost.” Therefore, the persons who uphold those sutras are also not yet “foremost.” The Lotus Sutra held by the Tiantai Lotus School is the absolute foremost. Therefore, the person who upholds the Lotus Sutra is also foremost among all living beings. This is based on the Buddha’s own words; how could it be self-praise?

The phrase “This sutra likewise is foremost among all the sutra teachings.“ refers to the superiority of the Law being upheld (sho-ji). The phrase “A person who can accept and uphold this sutra is likewise foremost among all living beings.“ refers to the superiority of the practitioner who upholds it (no-ji).

As stated in Person and the Law: “Since the Law is wonderful, the person is worthy of respect.”(WND1, p.1097) Therefore, those who slander this Law and this Person create the karma to fall into the Hell of Incessant Suffering (Avici Hell).

What was The Great Teacher Dengyō’s purpose in writing The Outstanding Principles of the Lotus Sutra

The Hokke Shuku consists of three scrolls (Upper, Middle, Lower) and was written in the 12th year of Konin (821 AD). It is also known as the “Ten Superiorities” (Jussho). Nichiren Daishonin wrote the Shuku Jussho Sho, making it clear he studied the Hokke Shuku. (Note: While the Shuku Jussho Sho is a genuine writing, it is considered a summary of Tiantai doctrines and is not included in the Gosho Zenshu).

The purpose of writing the Hokke Shuku is stated in its preface:

“The Hokke Shuku is a whetstone for polishing the jewel in the topknot… The scheming guest disputes right and wrong; the host seeking the jewel knows not where to turn… Therefore, I clear away the forest of rough food and establish the perfect city of Tiantai. There is a schemer [Tokuitsu] who says, ‘The doctrine of the Four Vehicles established by Tiantai steals the meaning of the Kegon sect… If Tiantai has no doctrine of its own, it cannot be a separate sect.’ He wishes to blind the people of the time… Therefore, I write these three scrolls of the Hokke Shuku. My only desire is that the victorious banner of the Mystic Law does not fall for a thousand generations…”

From this preface, we know the purpose was to assert the absolute superiority of the Lotus Sutra, crush the schemers of other sects, and increase the brilliance of the Tiantai Lotus teachings.

The “Ten Superiorities” (Jussho) in the section on Revealing Superiority include:

1. Superiority of Truth Revealed (vs. Expedient)

2. Superiority of the Sutra Title’s Meaning

3. Superiority of Preaching without Request … [listing continues through 10]

Through these writings, the Great Teacher Dengyo single-handedly crushed the erroneous sects and doctrines of his time.

Shakyamuni, T’ien-t’ai, and Dengyo all designated the Lotus Sutra as foremost among all sutras. In contrast, Jikaku designated the Shingon (Esoteric) teachings as foremost. This makes him an enemy of the Buddha and a great sinner. Kobo designated the Lotus Sutra as third, which is a grave error. However, Jikaku and Chisho, who designated the Lotus Sutra as second (claiming equality in principle), committed an even heavier sin because they confused people more deeply.

The Basics of Buddhist Study

 

 

Chapter18(The Three Teachers of the Three Countries of the Lotus Sutra)

Main Text

If we go by the Lotus Sutra and the interpretations of it put forward by T’ien-t’ai, Miao-lo, and Dengyō, then, in Japan at the present time, there is not a single votary of the Lotus Sutra!

In India, when Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, was preaching the Lotus Sutra as described in the “Treasure Tower” chapter, he summoned all the various Buddhas and had them take their seats upon the ground. Only the Thus Come One Mahāvairochana⁵⁸ was seated within the treasure tower, on the lower seat to the south,⁵⁹ while Shakyamuni Buddha was seated on the upper seat to the north.

This Thus Come One Mahāvairochana is the master of the Mahāvairochana of the Womb Realm described in the Mahāvairochana Sutra, and of the Mahāvairochana of the Diamond Realm described in the Diamond Crown Sutra. This Mahāvairochana, or Many Treasures Buddha, who has as his vassals the Thus Come Ones Mahāvairochana of the two realms just mentioned, is in turn surpassed by Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, who sits in the seat above him. This Shakyamuni Buddha is a true practitioner of the Lotus Sutra. Such was the situation in India.

In China, in the time of the Ch’en emperor [Shu-pao], the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai defeated in debate the Buddhist leaders of northern and southern China, and was honored with the title of Great Teacher while still alive. As Dengyō says of him, he was “far above the crowd; in all of China, he stood alone.”

In Japan, the Great Teacher Dengyō defeated in debate the leaders of the six schools and became the country’s first and foremost great teacher, Great Teacher Kompon.

In India, China, and Japan, these three persons alone—Shakyamuni, T’ien-t’ai, and Dengyō—were what the Lotus Sutra calls “foremost among all living beings.”

Thus Outstanding Principles states: “Shakyamuni taught that the shallow is easy to embrace, but the profound is difficult. To discard the shallow and seek the profound is the way of a person of courage. The Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai trusted and obeyed Shakyamuni and worked to uphold the Lotus school, spreading its teachings throughout China. We of Mount Hiei inherited the doctrine from T’ien-t’ai and work to uphold the Lotus school and to disseminate its teachings throughout Japan.”

In the eighteen hundred years or more since the passing of the Buddha, there has been only one votary of the Lotus Sutra in China and one in Japan. If Shakyamuni Buddha himself is added to the number, that makes a total of three persons.

The secular classics of China claim that a sage will appear once every thousand years, and a worthy once every five hundred. In the Yellow River where the Ching and Wei rivers⁶⁰ flow into it, the flow of the two tributary rivers remains separate. But it is said that, once every five hundred years, one side of the river will flow clear, and once every thousand years, both sides of the river will flow clear. [In the same way, sages and worthies appear at fixed intervals.]

 

Notes

58. “Mahāvairochana” here indicates the Buddha Many Treasures.

59. The south here corresponds to the left, as the treasure tower faces the west. The south seat is “lower” because, according to Indian custom, the left is inferior to the right.

60. Rivers in Shansi Province, China. The Ching River is always turbid and the Wei clear.

 

Lecture

 

 

Chapter19(Clarifying That Only Slanderers Exist in Japan)

Main Text

In Japan, as we have seen, only on Mount Hiei in the time of the Great Teacher Dengyō was there a votary of the Lotus Sutra. Dengyō was succeeded by Gishin and Enchō, the first and second chief priests of the school, respectively. But only the first chief priest, Gishin, followed the ways of the Great Teacher Dengyō. The second chief priest, Enchō, was half a disciple of Dengyō and half a disciple of Kōbō.

The third chief priest, the Great Teacher Jikaku, at first acted like a disciple of the Great Teacher Dengyō. But after he went to China at the age of forty, though he continued to call himself a disciple of Dengyō and went through the motions of carrying on Dengyō’s line, he taught a kind of Buddhism that was wholly unworthy of a true disciple of Dengyō. Only in the matter of the precepts of perfect and immediate enlightenment established by Dengyō did he conduct himself like a true disciple.

He was like a bat, for a bat resembles a bird yet is not a bird, and resembles a mouse yet is not a mouse. Or he was like an owl or a hakei beast.⁶¹ He ate his father, the Lotus Sutra, and devoured his mother, those who embrace the Lotus Sutra. When he dreamed that he shot down the sun, it must have been a portent of these crimes. And it must have been because of these acts that, after his death, no grave was set aside for him.

The temple Onjō-ji, representing Chishō’s branch of the Tendai school, fought incessantly with the temple Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei, which represented Jikaku’s branch of the school,⁶² the two going at each other like so many asuras and evil dragons. First Onjō-ji was burned down, then the buildings on Mount Hiei. As a result, the image of Bodhisattva Maitreya that had been the special object of devotion of the Great Teacher Chishō was burned, and the special object of devotion of the Great Teacher Jikaku, as well as the great lecture hall on Mount Hiei, was likewise burned. The priests of the two temples must have felt as though they had fallen into the hell of incessant suffering while they were still in this world. Only the main hall on Mount Hiei remained standing.

The lineage of the Great Teacher Kōbō has likewise ceased to be what it should have been. Kōbō left written instructions that no one who had not received the precepts at the ordination platform [established by Ganjin] at Tōdai-ji should be allowed to become head of Tō-ji temple. The Retired Emperor Kampyō,⁶³ however, founded a temple [in Kyoto] called Ninna-ji and moved a number of priests from Tō-ji to staff it, and he also issued a decree clearly stating that no one should be allowed to reside in Ninna-ji unless he had received the precepts of perfect and immediate enlightenment at the ordination platform on Mount Hiei. As a result, the priests of Tō-ji are neither disciples of Ganjin nor those of Kōbō. In terms of the precepts, they are Dengyō’s disciples. However, they do not behave like true disciples of Dengyō. They turn their backs on the Lotus Sutra, which Dengyō considered to be supreme.

Kōbō died on the twenty-first day of the third month in the second year of the Jōwa era (835), and the imperial court sent a representative to offer prayers at his funeral. Later, however, his disciples gathered together and, bent on deception, announced that he [had not died at all but] had entered a state of deep meditation, and some of them even claimed that they had had to shave his head because his hair had grown long. Others asserted that while he was in China he had hurled a three-pronged diamond-pounder all the way across the ocean to Japan;⁶⁴ that in answer to his prayers the sun had come out in the middle of the night; that he had transformed himself into the Thus Come One Mahāvairochana; or that he had instructed the Great Teacher Dengyō in the eighteen paths⁶⁵ of esoteric Buddhism. Thus by enumerating their teacher’s supposed virtues and powers, they hoped to make him appear wise, in this way lending support to his false doctrines and deluding the ruler and his ministers.

In addition, on Mount Kōya there are two main temples, the original temple⁶⁶ and Dembō-in. The original temple, which includes the great pagoda, was founded by Kōbō and is dedicated to the Thus Come One Mahāvairochana [of the Womb Realm]. The temple called Dembō-in was founded by Shōgaku-bō and is dedicated to the Mahāvairochana of the Diamond Realm. These two temples fight with each other day and night, in the same way as Onjō-ji at the foot of Mount Hiei and Enryaku-ji on top of Mount Hiei. Was it the accumulation of deceit that brought about the appearance in Japan of these calamities?

You may pile up dung and call it sandalwood, but when you burn it, it will give off only the odor of dung. You may pile up a lot of great lies and call them the teachings of the Buddha, but they will never be anything but a gateway to the great citadel of the hell of incessant suffering.

The stupa built by Nirgrantha Jnātaputra over a period of several years conferred great benefit upon living beings, but when Bodhisattva Ashvaghosha bowed to it, it suddenly collapsed.⁶⁷ The Brahman Demon Eloquence taught from behind a curtain and for a number of years succeeded in fooling others, but Bodhisattva Ashvaghosha berated him and exposed his falsehoods.⁶⁸ The non-Buddhist teacher Ulūka turned himself into a stone and remained in that form for eight hundred years, but when Bodhisattva Dignāga berated him, he turned into water. The Taoist priests for several hundred years deceived the people of China, but when they were rebuked by the Buddhist monks Kāshyapa Mātanga and Chu Fa-lan, they burned their own scriptures that purported to teach the way of the immortals.

Just as Chao Kao seized control of the country and Wang Mang⁶⁹ usurped the position of emperor, so the leaders of the True Word school deprived the Lotus Sutra of the rank it deserves and declared that its domain belongs instead to the Mahāvairochana Sutra. If the monarch of the Law has been deprived of his kingdom in this manner, can the monarch of people hope to remain peaceful and unharmed?

 

Notes

61. The owl was said to eat its mother, and the legendary hakei, a beast like a tiger, to eat its father.

62. Some time after Chishō’s death, friction over doctrinal differences arose between his followers and those in the line of Jikaku. It culminated in a violent dispute over succession to the chief priesthood after the death of Ryōgen, the eighteenth chief priest of Enryaku-ji. In 993, the followers of Chishō left Enryaku-ji and established themselves at Onjō-ji. The priests of the two temples attacked one another repeatedly.

63. Kampyō refers to the fifty-ninth emperor Uda (867–931) of Japan. After his abdication in 897, he took Buddhist vows and was known as the Retired Emperor Kampyō.

64. A ritual implement used for prayers in esoteric True Word Buddhism. This story appears in The Biography of the Great Teacher Kōbō by the True Word priest Ken’i (1072–1145). According to this work, before Kōbō left China, he hurled a three-pronged diamond-pounder into the air. Returning to Japan, he went to Mount Kōya to carry out the practice of the esoteric teachings. There he found the same diamond-pounder resting in a tree’s branches.

65. Esoteric practices employing eighteen different mudras, nine for the Diamond Realm and nine for the Womb Realm.

66. The original temple refers to Kongōbu-ji, the head temple of the True Word school, located on Mount Kōya.

67. This story appears in A History of the Buddha’s Successors. King Kanishka happened to pass by the stupa adorned with seven kinds of treasures that Nirgrantha Jnātaputra, one of the six non-Buddhist teachers and the founder of Jainism, had built. He mistook it for a Buddhist stupa and worshiped it, whereupon it collapsed. The Daishonin says that Ashvaghosha was the one who caused the stupa to collapse, probably because King Kanishka was converted to Buddhism by Ashvaghosha.

68. This story appears in Record of the Western Regions. In India there was a conceited Brahman named Demon Eloquence who amused himself with paradoxical theories and worshiped demons. He lived in a forest secluded from people. Because he conducted debates from behind a curtain, nobody had seen his true form. One day Ashvaghosha, together with the ruler, went to confront him in debate and argued him into silence. Then Ashvaghosha lifted the curtain, exposing his demonic appearance.

69. Wang Mang (45 b.c.e.–c.e. 23) was a high official who lived toward the end of the Former Han dynasty and controlled the throne by appointing nine-year-old Emperor P’ing to succeed. Eventually he poisoned P’ing, usurped the throne, and established a new dynasty called the Hsin.

 

Lecture

This chapter clarifies that there are no practitioners of the Lotus Sutra at all in our country, and that it is filled only with those who slander the Law. It is further divided into three sections:

First, it reveals the actual punishment (striking retribution) in this life and the posthumous disgrace of Jikaku, Chisho, and Kobo.

Second, beginning with the mention of Nirgrantha (Niken), it provides historical precedents showing that even if one deceives and confuses the world, such influence cannot endure for long.

Third, beginning with the mention of Zhao Gao (Choko), it clarifies the reasons behind the ruin of a nation.

 

 

Chapter20(Nichiren Daishonin’s Admonition to the Nation)

Main Text

Japan today is filled with followers of Jikaku, Chishō, and Kōbō—there is not a single person who is not a slanderer of the Law.

If we stop to consider the situation, it is very much like what prevailed in the Latter Day of the Law of the Buddha Great Adornment or the Latter Day of the Law of the Buddha All Bright King.⁷⁰ In the Latter Day of the Law of the Buddha Awesome Sound King, even though people repented of their wrongdoings, they still had to suffer for a thousand kalpas in the Avīchi hell.⁷¹ What, then, of the situation today? The True Word teachers, the followers of the Zen school, and the priests of the Nembutsu show not the slightest sign of repentance in their hearts. Can there be any doubt that, as the Lotus Sutra says, they “will keep repeating this cycle for a countless number of kalpas”?⁷²

Because Japan is a country where the correct teaching is slandered, heaven has abandoned it. And because heaven has abandoned it, the various benevolent deities who in the past guarded and protected the nation have burned their shrines and returned to the Capital of Tranquil Light.

Now there is only I, Nichiren, who remain behind, announcing and giving warning of these things. But when I do so, the rulers of the nation treat me like an enemy. People by the hundreds curse me and speak ill of me, attack me with staves and sticks, swords and knives. Door after door is closed to me, house after house drives me away. And when the authorities find that even such treatment does not stop me, they intervene in the matter. Twice they sent me into exile, and once, on the twelfth day of the ninth month in the eighth year of Bun’ei (1271), they very nearly cut off my head.

The Sovereign Kings Sutra says, “Because evil people are respected and favored and good people are subjected to punishment, marauders will appear from other regions, and the people of the country will meet with death and disorder.”

The Great Collection Sutra states: “There may perhaps be various kings of the Kshatriya class who act in a way contrary to the Law, causing anguish to the voice-hearer disciples of the World-Honored One. Perhaps they may curse and revile them or beat and injure them with swords and staves, or deprive them of their robes and begging bowls and the other things they need. Or perhaps they may restrain and persecute those who give alms to the disciples. If there should be those who do such things, then we will see to it that their enemies in foreign lands rise up suddenly of their own accord and march against them, and we will cause uprisings to break out within their states. We will bring about pestilence and famine, unseasonable winds and rains, and contention, wrangling, [and slander]. And we will make certain that those rulers do not last for long, but that their nations are brought to destruction.”

As these passages from the sutras indicate, if I, Nichiren, were not here in Japan, then one might suppose that the Buddha was a teller of great lies for making such predictions, and that he could not escape falling into the Avīchi hell.

On the twelfth day of the ninth month in the eighth year of Bun’ei, I stood in the presence of Hei no Saemon and several hundred others and declared, “Nichiren is the pillar of Japan! Doing away with Nichiren is toppling the pillar of Japan!”

The passages of scripture I have quoted indicate that, if the rulers, heeding the slanders of evil monks or the vicious talk of others, should inflict punishment on persons of wisdom, then warfare will immediately break out, great winds will blow, and attackers will appear from foreign lands. In the second month of the ninth year of Bun’ei (1272), fighting did in fact break out between two factions of the ruling Hōjō family;⁷³ in the fourth month of the eleventh year of Bun’ei, there were violent winds;⁷⁴ and in the tenth month of the same year, the Mongol forces attacked Japan. Has not all of this come about because of the treatment that has been given to me, Nichiren? This is exactly what I have been predicting from times past. Can anyone be in doubt about the matter?

 

Notes

70. According to the Buddha Treasury Sutra, in the remote past after the death of Great Adornment Buddha, his followers split into five schools, and only the monk Universal Practice correctly upheld what the Buddha had taught. The leaders of the four other schools held erroneous views and persecuted Universal Practice. For this reason, they and their followers fell into hell, where they suffered for a long time. Later, they were able to encounter and practice the correct teaching of the Buddha All Bright King. However, because of their grave offenses in the past, not one of them was able to attain nirvana at that time but had to endure again the sufferings of hell. The Buddha Treasury Sutra does not specifically mention that they were reborn in the Latter Day of the Law of the Buddha All Bright King.

71. This refers to the people who persecuted Bodhisattva Never Disparaging after the death of the Buddha Awesome Sound King, as described in the Lotus Sutra, chap. 20.

72. Lotus Sutra, chap. 3.

73. Hōjō Tokisuke (1247–1272), elder half brother of Regent Hōjō Tokimune, attempted to seize power, but failed. Many were killed in the fighting in Kyoto and Kamakura.

74. A reference to prayers for rain conducted by the True Word priest Dharma Seal Kaga, which produced not only rain but a destructive gale as well. The incident is described in detail in The Actions of the Votary of the Lotus Sutra.

 

Lecture

 

 

Chapter21(Clarifying the Origin of Disasters)

Main Text

The errors preached by Kōbō, Jikaku, and Chishō have for many long years been spread about the country, and then, on top of them, have come the confusions propagated by the Zen and Nembutsu schools. It is as though, in addition to adverse winds, one should be visited by huge waves and earthquakes as well. With all this, the nation has been brought to the verge of destruction.

In the past the grand minister of state⁷⁵ usurped the power of government, and after the Jōkyū Disturbance the imperial court ceased to exercise its rule and the seat of authority shifted east to Kamakura. But these were no more than internal disturbances; the nation as yet had not faced invasion from abroad.

Moreover, though at that time there were those who slandered the Law, there were also a few people who continued to uphold the correct doctrine of the Tendai school. And in addition, at that time no wise person had appeared who would attempt to remedy the situation. As a result, things were relatively peaceful.

If the lion is sleeping and you do not wake him, he will not roar. If the current is swift but you do not pull against it with your oar, no waves will rise up. If you do not accuse the thief to his face, he will remain unruffled; if you do not add fuel to the fire, it will not blaze up. In the same way, though there may be those who slander the Law, if no one comes forward to expose their error, then the government will continue for the time being on its regular course, and the nation will remain undisturbed.

For example, when the Buddhist teachings were first introduced to Japan, nothing out of the ordinary occurred. But later, when [Mononobe no] Moriya began burning Buddhist statues, seizing priests, and putting the torch to Buddhist halls and pagodas, then fire rained down from heaven, smallpox broke out in the nation, and there were repeated military clashes.

But the situation now is far worse. Today those who slander the Law fill the entire country, and I, Nichiren, attack them, strong in my determination to uphold what is right and just. We battle no less fiercely than the asuras and the god Shakra, or the Buddha and the devil king.

The Golden Light Sutra states, “There will be times when enemies among the neighboring states will begin to think as follows: ‘We must call out all our four types of troops⁷⁶ and destroy that country [where the slanderers of the Law live].’”

The same sutra also says: “There will be times when the rulers of neighboring states, observing the situation and mobilizing their four types of troops, will make ready to set out for the country [where the slanderers of the Law live], determined to subdue it. At that time we [the great deities] will instruct all the countless, limitless numbers of yakshas and other deities who are our followers to assume disguises and protect these rulers, causing their enemies to surrender to them without difficulty.”

The Sovereign Kings Sutra states the same thing, as do the Great Collection and Benevolent Kings sutras. According to the statements of these various sutras, if the ruler of a state persecutes those who practice the correct teaching and instead sides with those who practice erroneous teachings, then the heavenly kings Brahmā and Shakra, the gods of the sun and moon, and the four heavenly kings will possess the bodies of the worthy rulers of neighboring states and will attack his state. For example, King Krita was attacked by King Himatala, and King Mihirakula was overthrown by King Bālāditya. Kings Krita and Mihirakula were rulers in India who attempted to eradicate Buddhism. In China, too, all those rulers who tried to destroy Buddhism were attacked by worthy rulers.

But the situation in Japan today is much worse. For here the rulers appear to be supporters of the Buddhist teachings, but they assist the priests who are destroying Buddhism and persecute the practitioner of the correct teaching. As a result, ignorant people all fail to realize what is happening, and even wise persons, if they are no more than moderately wise, have difficulty grasping the situation. Even the lesser deities of heaven, I suspect, do not understand. For this reason, the confusion and depravity in Japan today are even greater than those in India or China in the past.

 

Notes

75. Taira no Kiyomori (1118–1181), warrior and leader of the Heike clan.

76. Troops that travel by foot, horse, elephant, and chariot.

 

Lecture

 

 

Chapter22(Clarifying the Slander of the Law Throughout the Nation)

Main Text

In the Decline of the Law Sutra the Buddha speaks as follows: “After I have entered nirvana, in the troubled times when the five cardinal sins prevail, the way of the devil will flourish. The devil will appear in the form of Buddhist monks and attempt to confuse and destroy my teachings. . . . Those who do evil will become as numerous as the sands of the ocean, while the good will be extremely few, perhaps no more than one or two persons.”

And the Nirvana Sutra says, “Those who thus are able to take faith in works such as this Nirvana Sutra will be as few as the specks of dirt that can be placed on a fingernail. . . . But those who are not able to take faith in this sutra will be as numerous as the specks of dirt in all the worlds of the ten directions.”

These passages from the scriptures are extremely apt, considering the times we live in, and they are deeply etched in my mind. Nowadays in Japan one hears people everywhere declaring, “I believe in the Lotus Sutra,” and “I, too, believe in the Lotus Sutra.” If we took them at their word, we would have to conclude that there is not a soul who slanders the Law. But the passage from the sutra that I have just quoted says that in the Latter Day the slanderers of the Law will occupy all the lands in the ten directions, while those who uphold the correct teaching will take up no more land than can be placed on top of a fingernail. What the sutra says and what the people of the world today say are as different as fire is from water. People these days say that, in Japan, Nichiren is the only one who slanders the Law. But the sutra says that there will be more slanderers of the Law than the great earth itself can hold.

The Decline of the Law Sutra says that there will be only one or two good persons, and the Nirvana Sutra says that the believers can fit into the space of a fingernail. If we accept what the sutras say, then in Japan Nichiren is the only good person, the one who fits into the space of a fingernail. Therefore, I hope that people who are seriously concerned about the matter will consider carefully whether they want to accept what the sutras say, or what the world says.

Someone might object that the passage in the Nirvana Sutra speaks about the votaries of the Nirvana Sutra being as few as the specks of dirt that can be placed on a fingernail, while I am talking about the Lotus Sutra. I would reply to this as follows.

The Nirvana Sutra itself says, “[When this sutra was preached . . . the prediction had already been made] in the Lotus Sutra [that the eight thousand voice-hearers would attain Buddhahood].” The Great Teacher Miao-lo says, “The Nirvana Sutra is itself pointing to the Lotus Sutra and saying that it is the ultimate.”⁷⁷ The Nirvana Sutra is calling the Lotus Sutra the ultimate. Therefore, when followers of the Nirvana school state that the Nirvana Sutra is superior to the Lotus Sutra, it is the same as calling a retainer a lord or a servant a master.

To read the Nirvana Sutra means to read the Lotus Sutra. For the Nirvana Sutra is like a worthy who rejoices to see another holding his sovereign in esteem even when he himself is treated with contempt. Thus the Nirvana Sutra would despise and regard as its enemy anyone who tried to demote the Lotus Sutra and praise the Nirvana Sutra instead.

 

Notes

77. On “The Words and Phrases.”

 

Lecture

 

 

Chapter23(The Great Teacher Chia-hsiang’s Repentance for the Sin of Slander)

Main Text

With this example in mind, one must understand the following point. If there are likewise those who read the Flower Garland Sutra, the Meditation Sutra, the Mahāvairochana Sutra, or some other sutra, and they do so thinking that the Lotus Sutra is inferior to those sutras, then they are doing violence to the very heart of those sutras. One must also understand the following point. Even though one reads the Lotus Sutra and appears to believe in it, if one thinks that one may also attain the way through any other sutra as well, then one is not really reading the Lotus Sutra.

For example, the Great Teacher Chia-hsiang wrote a work in ten volumes entitled The Treatise on the Profundity of the Lotus Sutra in which he praised the Lotus Sutra. But Miao-lo criticized the work, saying, “There are slanders in it—how can it be regarded as sincere praise?”⁷⁸

Chia-hsiang was in fact an offender against the Lotus Sutra. Thus, when he was defeated by T’ien-t’ai and served him, he no longer lectured on the Lotus Sutra. “If I were to lecture on it,” he said, “I could not avoid falling back into the paths of evil.” And for seven years, he made his own body a bridge [for T’ien-t’ai to walk on].

Similarly, the Great Teacher Tz’u-en wrote a work in ten volumes entitled Praising the Profundity of the Lotus Sutra in which he praised the Lotus Sutra, but the Great Teacher Dengyō criticized it, saying, “Though he praises the Lotus Sutra, he destroys its heart.”⁷⁹

If we consider these examples carefully, we will realize that, among those who read the Lotus Sutra and sing its praises, there are many who are destined for the hell of incessant suffering. Even men like Chia-hsiang and Tz’u-en were actually slanderers of the one vehicle of the Lotus Sutra. And if such can be said of them, it applies even more to men like Kōbō, Jikaku, and Chishō, who displayed open contempt for the Lotus Sutra.

There are those like the Great Teacher Chia-hsiang, who ceased giving lectures, dispersed the group of disciples that had gathered around him, and even made his body into a bridge for T’ien-t’ai. But in spite of these actions, the offense of his earlier slanders of the Lotus Sutra was not, I expect, so easily wiped out. The crowd of people who despised and abused Bodhisattva Never Disparaging, although they later came to believe in his teachings and became his followers, still carried the burden of their former actions and had to spend a thousand kalpas in the Avīchi hell as a result.

Accordingly, if men like Kōbō, Jikaku, and Chishō had lectured on the Lotus Sutra, even if they had repented of their errors, they would still have had difficulty making up for their former grave offenses. And of course, as we know, they never had any such change of heart. On the contrary, they completely ignored the Lotus Sutra and spent day and night carrying out the True Word practices and morning and evening preaching the True Word doctrines.

The bodhisattvas Vasubandhu and Ashvaghosha were both on the point of cutting out their tongues because of the offense they had committed by adhering to Hinayana doctrines and criticizing Mahayana. Vasubandhu declared that, although the Āgama sutras of the Hinayana were the words of the Buddha, he would not let his tongue utter them even in jest. And Ashvaghosha, as an act of penance, wrote Awakening of Faith in which he refuted the Hinayana teachings.

The Great Teacher Chia-hsiang in time went to the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai and begged for his lectures. In the presence of a hundred or more distinguished Buddhists, he threw himself on the ground, and, with sweat pouring from every part of his body and tears of blood streaming from his eyes, he declared that from then on he would not see his disciples any more and would no longer lecture on the Lotus Sutra. For, as he said, “If I were to go on facing my disciples and lecturing on the Lotus Sutra, they might suppose that I have the ability to understand the sutra correctly, when in fact I do not.”

Chia-hsiang was both older and more eminent than T’ien-t’ai, and yet, in the presence of others, he deliberately put T’ien-t’ai on his back and carried him across a river. Whenever T’ien-t’ai was about to ascend the lecture platform, Chia-hsiang would take him on his back and carry him up to the platform. After T’ien-t’ai’s death, when Chia-hsiang was summoned into the presence of the emperor of the Sui dynasty,⁸⁰ he is said to have wept and dragged his feet like a little child whose mother has just died.

When one examines Profundity of the Lotus Sutra by the Great Teacher Chia-hsiang, one finds that it is not the kind of commentary that speaks slanderously of the Lotus Sutra. It merely says that, although the Lotus Sutra and the other Mahayana sutras differ in the profundity of their teachings, they are at heart one and the same. Is this statement perhaps the source of the charge that the work slanders the Law?

Both Ch’eng-kuan of the Flower Garland school and Shan-wu-wei of the True Word school declared that the Lotus Sutra and the Mahāvairochana Sutra reveal the same principle. Therefore, if the Great Teacher Chia-hsiang is to be blamed for the statement I have just referred to, then the Tripitaka Master Shan-wu-wei can hardly escape being blamed as well.

 

Notes

78. On “The Words and Phrases.”

79. The Outstanding Principles of the Lotus Sutra.

80. The emperor of the Sui dynasty refers to the second ruler, Emperor Yang (569–618).

 

Lecture

 

 

Chapter24(Refuting the Three Founders of the True Word School in China)

Main Text

The Tripitaka Master Shan-wu-wei in his youth was the ruler of a kingdom in central India. But he abdicated the throne and traveled to other lands, where he met two men named Shushō and Shōdai from whom he received instruction in the Lotus Sutra.⁸¹ He built hundreds and thousands of stone stupas, and appeared to be a votary of the Lotus Sutra. Later, however, after he had received instruction in the Mahāvairochana Sutra, he seems to have concluded that the Lotus Sutra is inferior to the Mahāvairochana Sutra. He did not insist on this opinion at first, but came to do so later when he went to China and became a teacher to Emperor Hsüan-tsung of the T’ang dynasty.

Perhaps because he was consumed by jealousy of the T’ien-t’ai school, he died very suddenly and found himself bound with seven cords of iron and dragged by two wardens of hell to the court of Yama, the lord of hell. But he was told that his life span had not reached its conclusion and therefore was sent back to the human world.

While in hell, he suspected that he had been brought before Yama because he had slandered the Lotus Sutra, and he therefore quickly set aside all his True Word mudras, mantras, and methods of concentration, and instead chanted the passage from the Lotus Sutra that begins, “Now this threefold world is all my [Shakyamuni Buddha’s] domain,”⁸² whereupon the cords that bound him fell away and he was returned to life.

On another occasion, he was ordered by the imperial court to recite prayers for rain, and rain did in fact suddenly begin to fall, but a huge wind also rose up and did great damage to the country.

Later, when he really did die, his disciples gathered around his deathbed and praised the remarkable way in which he died, but in fact he fell into the great citadel of the hell of incessant suffering. You may ask how I know that this is so. I would reply that, if you examine his biography, you will find it stated, “Looking now at Shan-wu-wei’s remains, one can see that they are gradually shrinking, the skin is turning blackish, and the bones are exposed.”⁸³

Shan-wu-wei’s disciples perhaps did not realize that this was a sign that after his death he had been reborn in hell, but supposed that it was a manifestation of his virtue. Yet in describing it, the author of the biography exposed Shan-wu-wei’s guilt, recording that after his death his body gradually shrank, the skin turned black, and the bones began to show.

We have the Buddha’s own golden word for it that, if a person’s skin turns black after he dies, it is a sign that he has done something that destined him for hell. What was it, then, that the Tripitaka Master Shan-wu-wei did that would destine him for hell? In his youth he gave up the position of ruler, showing that he had an incomparable determination to seek the way. He traveled about to more than fifty different lands in India in the course of his religious practice, and his unbounded compassion even led him to visit China. The fact that the True Word teachings have been transmitted through India, China, Japan, and the other lands of Jambudvīpa and numerous practitioners ring bells in prayer is due to the merit of this man, is it not? Those who are concerned about their own destiny after death should inquire carefully as to the reason why Shan-wu-wei fell into hell.

Then there was the Tripitaka Master Chin-kang-chih, who was a son of the ruler of a kingdom in southern India. He introduced the Diamond Crown Sutra to China, and his virtue was similar to that of Shan-wu-wei. He and Shan-wu-wei acted as teachers to one another.

The Tripitaka Master Chin-kang-chih received an imperial order to conduct prayers for rain. Within the space of seven days, rain did in fact fall, and the emperor was very pleased. Suddenly, however, a violent wind arose, and the ruler and his ministers, much disillusioned, sent men to drive Chin-kang-chih out of the country, though in the end he managed to remain in China under one pretext or another.

Sometime later, when one of the emperor’s favorite daughters lay dying, he was ordered to pray for her recovery. He selected two seven-year-old girls who served at the court to be substitutes for the dying lady and had piles of firewood lighted all around them so that they burned to death. It was indeed a cruel thing to do. Moreover, the emperor’s daughter failed to return to life.

The Tripitaka Master Pu-k’ung came to China together with Chin-kang-chih.⁸⁴ But perhaps because his suspicions were aroused by the happenings I have just mentioned, after Shan-wu-wei and Chin-kang-chih died, he returned to India and studied the True Word doctrines all over again, this time under Nāgabodhi. In the end, he became a convert to the teachings of the T’ien-t’ai school. But although he acknowledged allegiance to these teachings in his heart, he would never do so in his outward actions.

Pu-k’ung, too, was ordered by the emperor to pray for rain, and within three days, rain did in fact fall. The emperor was pleased and dispensed rewards with his own hand. But shortly after, a huge wind descended from the sky, buffeting and damaging the imperial palace and toppling the quarters of the upper noblemen and high ministers until it seemed that not a building would be left standing. The emperor, astounded, issued an imperial command for prayers that the wind be stopped. But though it would stop for a time, it would start blowing again and again, until in the end it blew uninterrupted for a space of several days. Eventually, messengers were dispatched to drive Pu-k’ung out of the country, and then at last the wind subsided.

The evil winds of these three men have become the huge wind of the True Word leaders that blows throughout all of China and Japan. And if that is so, then the great gale that arose on the twelfth day of the fourth month in the eleventh year of Bun’ei (1274) must have been an adverse wind brought about by the Dharma Seal Kaga of the Amida Hall, one of the most learned priests of Tō-ji temple, when he was praying for rain. We must conclude that the evil teachings of Shan-wu-wei, Chin-kang-chih, and Pu-k’ung have been transmitted without the slightest alteration. What a strange coincidence indeed!

 

Notes

81. This story appears in The Sung Dynasty Biographies of Eminent Priests. Shushō and Shōdai were men of India, but their Sanskrit names are not known.

82. Lotus Sutra, chap. 3. The line following in the verse reads, “The living beings in it are all my children.”

83. Sung Dynasty Biographies.

84. A comparison of dates would indicate that Pu-k’ung did not meet Chin-kang-chih and become his disciple until after he had arrived in China, but this may not have been known in the Daishonin’s time.

 

Lecture

 

 

Chapter25(The Ominous Manifestations of Kobo and Jikaku)

Main Text

Let us turn now to the Great Teacher Kōbō. At the time of the great drought in the second month of the first year of Tenchō (824), the emperor ordered Shubin to pray for rain, and within seven days Shubin was able to make rain fall. But the rain fell only in the capital and did not extend to the countryside.

Kōbō was then ordered to take over the prayers for rain, but seven days passed and there was no sign of it. Another seven days passed and there still were no clouds. After seven more days had passed, the emperor ordered Wake no Matsuna to go and present offerings in Shinsen’en garden,⁸⁵ whereupon rain fell from the sky for a period of three days. The Great Teacher Kōbō and his disciples thereupon proceeded to appropriate this rain and claim it as their own, and for more than four hundred years now, it has been known as “Kōbō’s rain.”

The Great Teacher Jikaku said he had a dream in which he shot down the sun. And the Great Teacher Kōbō told a great falsehood, claiming that, in the spring of the ninth year of the Kōnin era (818), when he was praying for an end to the great epidemic, the sun came out in the middle of the night.

Since the kalpa of formation, when the earth took shape, down to the ninth period of decrease⁸⁶ in the kalpa of continuance, twenty-nine kalpas have passed by, but in all that time, the sun has never been known to come out at night! As to the Great Teacher Jikaku’s dream of the sun, where in all the five thousand or seven thousand volumes of the Buddhist scriptures or the three thousand or more volumes of the Confucian and Taoist scriptures is it recorded that to dream of shooting the sun is auspicious? The king of the asuras, angered at the deity Shakra, shot an arrow at the sun god, but the arrow came back and struck the king himself in the eye. King Chou⁸⁷ of the Yin dynasty used the sun as a target for his arrows, and in the end he was destroyed.

In Japan, in the reign of Emperor Jimmu, the emperor’s elder brother Itsuse no Mikoto engaged in battle with the chieftain of Tomi,⁸⁸ and Itsuse no Mikoto was wounded in the hand by an arrow. He said, “I am a descendant of the sun deity. But because I have drawn my bow while facing the sun, I have incurred this punishment from the sun deity.”

In India, King Ajātashatru renounced his earlier mistaken views and became a follower of the Buddha. He returned to his palace and lay down to sleep, but later rose up in alarm and said to his ministers, “I have dreamed that the sun has left the sky and fallen to the earth!” His ministers said, “Perhaps this means the passing away of the Buddha.” Subhadra⁸⁹ also had the same kind of dream just before the Buddha passed away.

It would be particularly inauspicious to dream [as Jikaku claims he did] of shooting the sun in Japan, since the supreme deity in Japan is the Sun Goddess, and the name of the country, Japan, means “source of the sun.” In addition, Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, is called Sun Seed because his mother, Lady Māyā, dreamed that she conceived the sun and in time gave birth to this child, the crown prince.

The Great Teacher Jikaku established the Thus Come One Mahāvairochana as the object of devotion on Mount Hiei and rejected Shakyamuni Buddha. He paid honor to the three True Word sutras and acted as an enemy to the Lotus Sutra and its two companion sutras. That was no doubt the reason why he dreamed this dream of shooting the sun.

 

Notes

85. Shinsen’en was a garden established by Emperor Kammu within the imperial palace in Kyoto. It was the site of a large pond where prayers for rain were performed. According to Genkō Era Biographies, a dragon lived in this pond, and when it made an appearance, rain would fall. Matsuna’s offerings were made to this dragon.

86. “The ninth period of decrease” corresponds to the present age. See kalpa of continuance in Glossary.

87. A dissolute ruler who was conquered by King Wu of the Chou dynasty. According to Records of the Historian, he had a human figure made and called it a heavenly god, and caused people to treat it with contempt. Moreover, it is said that he shot arrows at a leather bag filled with blood, claiming that he had shot the god of the sun.

88. The chieftain of Tomi refers to Nagasunebiko, a powerful local leader in Yamato. According to The Chronicles of Japan, Jimmu, the legendary first emperor, proceeded southward to invade the Yamato region, where he was engaged in battle by Nagasunebiko and driven back.

89. The last convert of Shakyamuni Buddha. According to The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom, he had a dream in which all people were deprived of their eyesight and left standing naked in the darkness, whereupon the sun fell from the sky, the earth cracked, the seas ran dry, and Mount Sumeru was toppled by a great wind. In the morning, being told that the Buddha would enter nirvana before the next day, he went to Shakyamuni and joined the Order, and that night attained the state of arhat.

 

Lecture

 

 

Chapter26(Citing Examples of Shan-tao’s Ominous Dreams)

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On the subject of dreams, there is also the case of the priest Shan-tao in China. In his youth he met a priest named Ming-sheng⁹⁰ of Mi-chou and received instruction in the Lotus Sutra. Later, however, when he met Tao-ch’o, he threw aside the Lotus Sutra and put all his trust in the Meditation Sutra. He even wrote a commentary on the sutra, which asserted that with the Lotus Sutra, not even one person in a thousand can be saved, whereas the Nembutsu practice insures that ten persons out of ten and a hundred persons out of a hundred will be reborn in the Pure Land. In order to prove his point, he prayed before Amida Buddha to confirm whether or not his views accorded with the Buddha’s intent. His commentary says, “Every night in a dream a priest would appear and tell me what to write,” and “Therefore, this commentary should be regarded with the same respect as the sutra itself.” It also says, “The Teaching on Meditation Sutra should also be revered as though it were a sutra.”

The Lotus Sutra says, “If there are those who hear the Law, then not a one will fail to attain Buddhahood.”⁹¹ But Shan-tao says that not even one in a thousand will be saved.⁹² The Lotus Sutra and Shan-tao are as different as fire is from water. Shan-tao says that with the Meditation Sutra ten persons out of ten and a hundred persons out of a hundred will be reborn in the Pure Land. But in the Immeasurable Meanings Sutra the Buddha says that in the Meditation Sutra “I have not yet revealed the truth.” The Immeasurable Meanings Sutra and this priest of the Willow Tree⁹³ are as far apart as heaven and earth.

In view of this, can we really believe that Amida Buddha took the form of a priest and appeared to Shan-tao in dreams to assure him that his commentary represented the truth? Was not Amida among those present when the Lotus Sutra was preached, and did he not extend his tongue along with the other Buddhas and testify to the truth of the sutra? Were his attendants, the bodhisattvas Perceiver of the World’s Sounds and Great Power, not also present when the Lotus Sutra was preached? The answers to these questions are obvious, and in like manner, if we stop to think of it, we can see that Jikaku’s dream was a portent of evil.

 

Notes

90. Ming-sheng (n.d.) was a priest of the Three Treatises school during the T’ang dynasty. He was a disciple of Fa-lang, and Chia-hsiang was one of his fellow priests.

91. Lotus Sutra, chap. 2.

92. Praising Rebirth in the Pure Land.

93. “This priest of the Willow Tree” refers to Shan-tao, who was so called because he is said to have attempted to commit suicide by hanging himself from a branch of a willow tree in front of the temple where he lived in hopes of going to the Pure Land. However, either the rope or the willow branch broke, and he fell to the ground. He died a week later in torment from his injuries.

 

Lecture

 

 

Chapter27(Refuting the Miracles of Kobo)

Main Text

Question: The Great Teacher Kōbō in his Secret Key to the Heart Sutra writes: “In the spring of the ninth year of Kōnin, the empire was troubled by a great plague. Thereupon the emperor in person dipped his writing brush in gold, took a piece of dark blue paper in his hand, and wrote out a copy of the Heart Sutra in one roll. I had been appointed by the ruler to lecture on the Heart Sutra. Having compiled my explanations of its meaning, I [was delivering the lecture but] had not yet reached my concluding remarks, when those who had recovered from the plague began to fill the streets of the capital. Moreover, when night came, the sun continued to shine bright and red.

“This was certainly not the result of any virtuous observance of the precepts on the part of an ignorant person like myself, but was due rather to the power of faith manifested by the sovereign as the gold-wheel-turning king.⁹⁴ Nevertheless, those who go to pray at the shrines of the gods should recite this commentary of mine. For I was present long ago at Eagle Peak when the Buddha preached the Heart Sutra, and I personally heard him expound its profound doctrines. How, then, could I fail to understand its meaning?”

Again in the work entitled The Annotations on the Peacock Sutra, we read: “After the Great Teacher Kōbō returned from China, he desired to establish the True Word school in Japan, and representatives of all the various schools were summoned to the imperial court. But many of them had doubts about the True Word doctrine of the attaining of Buddhahood in one’s present form. The great teacher thereupon formed his hands in the wisdom mudra and faced south. Suddenly his mouth opened, and he turned into the golden-colored Buddha Mahāvairochana—that is, he reverted to his original form. In this way he demonstrated that the Buddha is present in the individual and that the individual is present in the Buddha, and that one can immediately attain Buddhahood in one’s present form. On that day, all doubts concerning the matter were completely resolved, and from that time the True Word, or Yoga,⁹⁵ school with its doctrines of secret mandalas was established.”

The same work also says: “At this time the students of the other schools all bowed to the opinion of the Great Teacher Kōbō and for the first time received instruction in the True Word doctrines, sought their benefit, and practiced them. Dōshō of the Three Treatises school, Gennin of the Dharma Characteristics school, Dōyū⁹⁶ of the Flower Garland school, and Enchō of the Tendai school were all among those who did so.”

In addition, the biography of the Great Teacher Kōbō states: “On the day when he set out by ship from China, he voiced a prayer, saying, ‘If there is a spot that is particularly suitable for the teaching of these doctrines that I have learned, may this three-pronged diamond-pounder land there!’ Then he faced in the direction of Japan and threw the diamond-pounder up into the air. It sailed far away and disappeared among the clouds. In the tenth month, he returned to Japan.”

The same work states: “He journeyed to the foot of Mount Kōya and determined to establish his place of meditation there . . . and later it was discovered that the three-pronged diamond-pounder that he had thrown out over the sea was there on the mountain.”

It is clear from these two or three incidents that the Great Teacher Kōbō was a person of inestimable power and virtue. Since he was a person of such great power, why do you say that one should not believe in his teachings, and that anyone who does so will fall into the Avīchi hell?

Answer: I, too, admire and believe in these various accomplishments of his. There are other men of old who possessed such uncanny powers. But the possession of such power does not indicate whether that person’s understanding of the Buddhist teaching is correct or not. Among the non-Buddhist believers of India there have been men who could pour all the waters of the Ganges River into their ear and keep it there for twelve years, or those who could drink the ocean dry, grasp the sun and moon in their hands, or change the disciples of Shakyamuni Buddha into oxen or sheep. But such powers only made them more arrogant than ever and caused them to create further karma to confine themselves in the sufferings of birth and death. It is men like these whom T’ien-t’ai is referring to when he says, “They seek after fame and profit and increase their illusions of thought and desire.”⁹⁷

The Chinese priest Fa-yün of Kuang-che-ssu temple could make it rain suddenly or cause flowers to bloom immediately, but Miao-lo writes of him, “Though he could bring about a response in this way, his understanding still did not accord with the truth [of the Lotus Sutra].”⁹⁸ When the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai read the Lotus Sutra, soft rain began to fall in an instant, and the Great Teacher Dengyō caused sweet rain to fall within the space of three days. However, they did not say that because of such powers their understanding of the truth coincided with that of the Buddha.

Regardless of what unusual powers the Great Teacher Kōbō may have had, he described the Lotus Sutra as a doctrine of childish theory and wrote that Shakyamuni Buddha was still in the region of darkness. Persons of wisdom and understanding should have nothing to do with such writings.

 

Notes

94. One of the four types of wheel-turning kings. The king who rules all the four continents surrounding Mount Sumeru.

95. Yoga (Skt), or “union,” is another name for the True Word school. Esoteric Buddhism stresses the union of the body, voice, and mind of common mortals with those of Mahāvairochana Buddha. In terms of practice, mudras represent the body, mantras, the voice, and meditation on mandalas, the mind.

96. Dōshō (799–875) first studied the Three Treatises doctrines but later became a follower of Kōbō. Gennin (818–887) first studied the Dharma Characteristics doctrines but later studied the esoteric teachings under Shinga. In 885, he became the chief priest of Tō-ji temple. Dōyū (d. 851) first studied the Dharma Characteristics teachings but later turned to the Flower Garland doctrines. He became the seventh patriarch of the Flower Garland school.

97. The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra.

98. The Annotations on “The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra.”

 

Lecture

 

 

Chapter28(Rebuking the Deceptions of Kobo)

Main Text

Say what you may, there are surely doubtful points in the accounts of Kōbō’s powers you have just cited. The text says, “In the spring of the ninth year of Kōnin, the empire was troubled by a great plague.” But spring is ninety days long.⁹⁹ On which day of which month of spring did this happen? This is the first doubtful point.

Secondly, was there in fact an outbreak of plague in the ninth year of Kōnin?

Thirdly, the text says, “When night came, the sun continued to shine bright and red.” If it really did so, then this is an occurrence of major importance. During the ninth year of Kōnin, Emperor Saga reigned. But did the court historians of the left and right¹⁰⁰ record any such event?

Even if they had, it would be difficult to believe. During the twenty kalpas of the kalpa of formation and nine kalpas of the kalpa of continuance, a total of twenty-nine kalpas, never once has such a thing occurred. What then is this about the sun appearing in the middle of the night? In all the sacred teachings expounded by the Thus Come One Shakyamuni during his lifetime, there is no mention of any such thing. And in the Three Records and the Five Canons of China, which describe the three sovereigns and five emperors of antiquity, there is no prediction that at some future date the sun will come out in the middle of the night. In the scriptures of Buddhism, we are told that, in the kalpa of decline, two suns, three suns, or even seven suns will appear, but these will appear in the daytime, not at night. And if the sun should appear at night in our own region, the continent of Jambudvīpa in the south, then what about the other three regions of the east, west, and north?

Regardless of what the Buddhist scriptures or the secular works may have to say about such an event, if in fact there were some entry in the daily records of the courtiers, the other families of the capital, or the priests of Mount Hiei saying that in the spring of the ninth year of Kōnin, in such and such a month, on such and such a day, at such and such an hour of the night the sun appeared, then we might perhaps believe it. [But no such record exists.]

Later, the text says, “I was present long ago at Eagle Peak when the Buddha preached the Heart Sutra, and I personally heard him expound its profound doctrines.” This is surely a wild falsehood that is intended to make people have faith in his commentary. If not, are we to believe that at Eagle Peak the Buddha announced that the Lotus Sutra was a piece of childish theory and that the Mahāvairochana Sutra represented the truth, and that Ānanda and Manjushrī were simply mistaken in saying that the Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law represents the truth?

As for making it rain, even a woman who was licentious and a priest who was a breaker of the precepts¹⁰¹ were able by their poems to cause rain to fall. Yet Kōbō prayed for twenty-one days and still it did not rain, so what sort of powers could he have possessed? This is the fourth doubtful point.

On the Peacock Sutra states, “The great teacher [Kōbō] thereupon formed his hands in the wisdom mudra and faced south. Suddenly his mouth opened, and he turned into the golden-colored Buddha Mahāvairochana.” Now in what year of the reign of what ruler did this happen?

In China from the time of the Chien-yüan era (140–134 b.c.e.), and in Japan from the time of the Taihō era (701–704), among the records of events kept by priests and the laity, those of important occurrences have always been accompanied by the name of the era in which they took place. With an event as important as that described, why then is there no mention of who the ruler was, who his high ministers were, what the name of the era was, or what day and hour the event took place?

The passage goes on to list “Dōshō of the Three Treatises school, Gennin of the Dharma Characteristics school, Dōyū of the Flower Garland school, and Enchō of the Tendai school” [as those who learned the True Word doctrines from Kōbō]. Enchō is known posthumously as the Great Teacher Jakkō and was the second chief priest of the Tendai school. Now at that time, why was Gishin, the first chief priest, or the Great Teacher Dengyō, the founder of the school, not invited to be present? Enchō, the second chief priest of the Tendai school, was a disciple of the Great Teacher Dengyō and also became a disciple of the Great Teacher Kōbō. Rather than inviting a disciple or rather than inviting men of the Three Treatises, Dharma Characteristics, and Flower Garland schools, why did Kōbō not invite the two most important men of the Tendai school, Dengyō and Gishin?

Speaking of the time when these men were invited, On the Peacock Sutra states, “From that time the True Word, or Yoga, school with its doctrines of secret mandalas was established.” This would seem to refer to a time when both Dengyō and Gishin were still alive. From the second year of Daido (807), in the reign of Emperor Heizei, until the thirteenth year of Kōnin (822) [when Dengyō died], Kōbō was very active in spreading the True Word doctrines, and during this period both Dengyō and Gishin were still alive. Moreover, Gishin lived on until the tenth year of Tenchō (833). Had Kōbō’s True Word teachings not been spread by that time? The whole matter is very strange.

On the Peacock Sutra was written by Shinzei,¹⁰² a disciple of Kōbō, and therefore it is difficult to trust what it says. Is it likely that a person of such deluded views would have troubled to read the writings of the courtiers, the other important families, or Enchō on which to base his account? One should also check the writings of Dōshō, Gennin, and Dōyū to see if they have anything to say on the matter.

The text says, “Suddenly his mouth opened, and he turned into the golden-colored Buddha Mahāvairochana.” What does it mean by the expression “his mouth opened”? The writer probably intended to write the characters meaning the “area between the eyebrows,”¹⁰³ but he mistakenly wrote those for “mouth” instead. Because he wrote a book of fabrications, he quite likely made mistakes of this kind.

The whole passage says: “The great teacher thereupon formed his hands in the wisdom mudra and faced south. Suddenly his mouth opened, and he turned into the golden-colored Buddha Mahāvairochana.”

Now in the fifth volume of the Nirvana Sutra we read: “Kāshyapa spoke to the Buddha, saying: ‘World-Honored One, I will no longer depend upon the four ranks of sages. Why is this? Because in the Ghoshila Sutra that the Buddha preached for the sake of Ghoshila,¹⁰⁴ it is said that the devil king in heaven, because he is determined to try to destroy the Buddhist teachings, will turn himself into the likeness of a Buddha. He will have all the thirty-two features and eighty characteristics of a Buddha, will be solemn and imposing in appearance, and a round halo of light will radiate from him ten feet in all directions. His face will be round and full like the moon at its fullest and brightest, and the tuft of white hair in between his eyebrows will be whiter than snow. . . . From his left side will come water, and from his right side will come fire.’”

Again, in the sixth volume of the Nirvana Sutra, it is recorded: “The Buddha announced to Kāshyapa: ‘After I have passed into nirvana . . . this devil king Pāpīyas will in time try to destroy the correct teaching of mine. . . . He will change his form into that of an arhat or a Buddha. The devil king, though still subject to illusion, will assume the form of one who has been freed from illusion, and will try to destroy the correct teaching of mine.’”

The Great Teacher Kōbō declared that, in comparison to the Flower Garland and Mahāvairochana sutras, the Lotus Sutra was a piece of childish theory. And this same man, we are told, appeared in the form of a Buddha. He must be the devil who, as the Nirvana Sutra states, will change his shape, which is still subject to illusion, into that of a Buddha and attempt to destroy the correct teaching of Shakyamuni.

This “correct teaching” referred to in the Nirvana Sutra is the Lotus Sutra. Therefore, we find later on in the Nirvana Sutra the statement “It has already been a long time since I attained Buddhahood.” The text also says, “[When this sutra was preached . . . the prediction had already been made] in the Lotus Sutra [that the eight thousand voice-hearers would attain Buddhahood].”

Shakyamuni, Many Treasures, and the Buddhas of the ten directions declared with regard to the various sutras that the Lotus Sutra represents the truth; the Mahāvairochana and all the other sutras do not represent the truth. Yet the Great Teacher Kōbō appeared in the form of a Buddha and announced that, compared to the Flower Garland and Mahāvairochana sutras, the Lotus Sutra is a piece of childish theory. If the words of the Buddha are true, then Kōbō must be none other than the devil king in heaven, must he not?

Again, the matter of the three-pronged diamond-pounder appears to be particularly suspicious. It would be difficult to believe even if a Chinese [who had not known the circumstances] had come to Japan and happened to dig up the pounder. Surely someone must have been sent earlier to bury it in that particular spot. Since Kōbō was a Japanese, he could have arranged such a thing. There are many such wild and absurd stories associated with his name. Such incidents hardly lend support to the assertion that his teachings accord with the will of the Buddha.

 

Notes

99. The ninety-day period from the beginning of the first month through the end of the third. In the lunar calendar, the first day of the first month was regarded as the beginning of spring.

100. “Court historian” was an official position of the Grand Council of State. There were eight altogether: four of the left and four of the right. A historian of the left recorded events; a historian of the right recorded the words of the emperor.

101. A reference to the poet and court lady-in-waiting Izumi Shikibu (b. c. 976) and the priest Nōin (b. 988), whose works include poems that express prayers for rain.

102. Shinzei (800–860) was a priest of the True Word school. He was granted the position of Āchārya, which qualifies one to transmit the secret doctrines of the True Word.

103. This implies one of the thirty-two features of a Buddha, a tuft of white hair between the eyebrows.

104. Ghoshila was a wealthy householder of Kaushambi, who built Ghoshilavana Monastery to invite Shakyamuni Buddha to preach.

 

Lecture

 

 

Chapter29(Concluding the Refutation of the True Word School )

Main Text

Thus the doctrines of the True Word, Zen, and Nembutsu schools spread and prospered in Japan. Eventually, Takahira, the Retired Emperor of Oki who was the eighty-second sovereign, began making efforts to overthrow the acting administrator.¹⁰⁵ Since he was the sovereign, the leader of the nation, people supposed that, even without assistance, it would be as easy as a lion pouncing on a hare, or a hawk seizing a pheasant. Moreover, for a period of several years appeals had been made at Mount Hiei, the temples of Tō-ji and Onjō-ji, and the seven major temples of Nara, as well as to the Sun Goddess, Great Bodhisattva Hachiman, and the deities of Sannō, Kamo, and Kasuga shrines,¹⁰⁶ asking that the emperor’s enemies be subdued, and that the gods lend their aid. Yet when war broke out, the imperial forces were not able to hold out for more than two or three days. In the end, the three retired emperors were exiled to the provinces of Sado, Awa, and Oki, respectively,¹⁰⁷ where their lives came to a close.

Moreover, not only was the prelate of Omuro,¹⁰⁸ who was leading the prayers to subdue the enemies of the court, driven out of Tō-ji temple, but his favorite, the page Setaka,¹⁰⁹ who was as dear to him as his very eyes, was beheaded. Thus, as the Lotus Sutra says, the curses in the end “rebound upon the originator.”¹¹⁰

But this is a trifling matter compared to what is to come. Hereafter, I have no doubt that the officials and the countless common people of Japan will without exception suffer a fate like that of heaps of dry grass to which a torch has been set, or like huge mountains crumbling and valleys being filled up, for our country will be attacked by enemies from abroad.

 

Notes

105. Hōjō Yoshitoki (1163–1224), the second regent of the Kamakura government.

106. Sannō Shrine on Mount Hiei is dedicated to the deity Mountain King. The Kamo shrines are two independent but closely related shrines located on the Kamo River in Kyoto. According to tradition, they were built in 678. They enjoyed the patronage of the imperial court and the shogunate. Kasuga Shrine in Nara was founded in 709 by Fujiwara Fuhito and dedicated to the deities associated with the Fujiwara family. Thus it served as both a clan shrine and a national shrine.

107. Gotoba was exiled to the island of Oki, and Juntoku to the island of Sado. Tsuchimikado was exiled to Tosa Province in Shikoku and later was moved to the neighboring province of Awa (different from the Awa Province in eastern Japan where the Daishonin was born).

108. The prelate of Omuro refers here to Prince Dōjō, a son of Emperor Gotoba, who entered the priesthood and lived at Ninna-ji temple of the True Word school in Kyoto.

109. Setaka (d. 1221) was a son of Sasaki Hirotsuna, the constable of Ōmi who rallied to the imperial cause during the Jōkyū Disturbance. Setaka served Dōjō at Ninna-ji temple but was killed after the disturbance.

110. Lotus Sutra, chap. 25.

 

Lecture

 

 

Chapter30(Nichiren Daishonin’s “Knowing and Repaying Debts of Gratitude”)

Main Text

I, Nichiren, am the only one in the whole country of Japan who understands why these things will happen. But if I speak out, I will be treated as King Chou of the Yin dynasty treated Pi Kan, tearing open his chest; as King Chieh of the Hsia dynasty treated Kuan Lung-feng, cutting off his head; or as King Dammira treated the Venerable Āryasimha, beheading him. I will be banished like the priest Chu Tao-sheng, or branded on the face like the Tripitaka Master Fa-tao.

In the Lotus Sutra, however, it is written, “We care nothing for our bodies or lives but are anxious only for the unsurpassed way.”¹¹¹ And the Nirvana Sutra warns, “[It is like a royal envoy who] would rather, even though it costs him his life, in the end conceal none of the words of his ruler.”

If in this present existence I am so fearful for my life that I fail to speak out, then in what future existence will I ever attain Buddhahood? Or in what future existence will I ever be able to bring salvation to my parents and my teacher? With thoughts such as these uppermost in my mind, I decided that I must begin to speak out. And, just as I had expected, I was ousted, I was vilified, I was attacked, and I suffered wounds. Finally, on the twelfth day of the fifth month in the first year of the Kōchō era (1261), the year with the cyclical sign kanoto-tori, having incurred the wrath of the authorities, I was banished to Ito in the province of Izu. Eventually, on the twenty-second day of the second month in the third year of Kōchō, cyclical sign mizunoto-i, I was pardoned and allowed to return.

After that, I became more determined than ever to attain enlightenment and continued to speak out. Accordingly, the difficulties I encountered became increasingly severe, like great waves that rise up in a gale. I experienced with my own body the kind of attacks with sticks and staves that Bodhisattva Never Disparaging suffered in ancient times. It would seem that even the persecutions suffered by the monk Realization of Virtue in the latter age after the passing of the Buddha Joy Increasing could not compare to my trials. Nowhere in all the sixty-six provinces and the two offshore islands of Japan, not for a day, not for an hour, could I find a place to rest in safety.

Even sages who persevere in their practice as earnestly as did Rāhula in ancient times, strictly observing all the two hundred and fifty precepts, or men who are as wise as Pūrna, speak evil of Nichiren when they encounter him. Even worthies who are as honest and upright as the court officials Wei Cheng¹¹² and Fujiwara no Yoshifusa,¹¹³ when they see Nichiren, forsake reason and treat him unjustly.

How much more so is this the case with the ordinary people of the day! They behave like dogs who have seen a monkey, or hunters in pursuit of a deer. Throughout the whole of Japan, there is not a single person who says, “Perhaps this man has some reason for his behavior.”

But that is only to be expected. For whenever I come upon a person who recites the Nembutsu, I tell him that those who believe in the Nembutsu will fall into the hell of incessant suffering. Whenever I come upon a person who honors the True Word teachings, I tell him that True Word is an evil doctrine that will destroy the nation. And to the ruler of the nation, who honors the Zen school, I declare that Zen is the invention of the heavenly devil.

Since I willingly bring these troubles upon myself, when others vilify me, I do not rebuke them. Even if I wanted to rebuke them, there are too many of them. And even when they strike me, I feel no pain, for I have been prepared for their blows from the very beginning.

And so I went about with ever increasing vigor and ever less concern for my safety, trying to persuade others to change their ways. As a result, several hundred Zen priests, several thousand Nembutsu believers, and even more True Word teachers went to the magistrate or the men of powerful families, or to their wives or their widows who were lay nuns, and filled their ears with endless slanders concerning me.

Finally, all were convinced that I was the gravest offender in the entire nation, for it was said that in my capacity as a priest I was saying prayers and spells for the destruction of Japan, and that I had reported that the late lay priests of Saimyō-ji and Gokuraku-ji had fallen into the hell of incessant suffering. Those widows who were lay nuns insisted that investigation was unnecessary; rather, I should have my head cut off at once, and my disciples should likewise be beheaded or exiled to distant lands or placed in confinement. So infuriated were they that their demands for punishment were immediately carried out.

On the night of the twelfth day of the ninth month in the eighth year of Bun’ei (1271), cyclical sign kanoto-hitsuji, I was to have been beheaded at Tatsunokuchi in the province of Sagami. But for some reason the execution was postponed, and that night I was taken to a place called Echi. On the night of the thirteenth day, people made a great uproar, saying I had been pardoned. But, again for reasons that are unclear, I was ordered into exile in the province of Sado.

While people speculated from one day to the next if I would be beheaded, I passed four years¹¹⁴ on Sado. Then on the fourteenth day of the second month in the eleventh year of Bun’ei, cyclical sign kinoe-inu, I was pardoned. On the twenty-sixth day of the third month of the same year, I returned to Kamakura, and on the eighth day of the fourth month I met with Hei no Saemon-no-jō. I reported on various matters and informed him that the Mongols would certainly invade Japan within that year. Then on the twelfth day of the fifth month, I left Kamakura and came to this mountain where I am now living.

All these things I have done solely to repay the debt I owe to my parents, the debt I owe to my teacher, the debt I owe to the three treasures of Buddhism, and the debt I owe to my country. For their sake I have been willing to destroy my body and to give up my life, though as it turns out, I have not been put to death after all.

If a worthy man makes three attempts to warn the rulers of the nation and they still refuse to heed his advice, then he should retire to a mountain forest. This has been the custom from ages past, and I have accordingly followed it.

 

Notes

111. Ibid., chap. 13.

112. Wei Cheng (580–643) was a minister who faithfully served Emperor T’ai-tsung of the T’ang dynasty and gave counsel to his government.

113. Fujiwara no Yoshifusa (804–872) was the minister of the left and grandfather of the fifty-sixth emperor Seiwa. Having become a court official at an early age, he laid the foundation for the prosperity of the Fujiwara family.

114. The Daishonin means here that his exile on Sado spanned the years 1271 to 1274.

 

Lecture

 

 

Chapter31(Repaying Debts of Gratitude to Dozen-bo)

Main Text

I am quite certain that the merit I have acquired through my efforts is recognized by everyone from the three treasures on down to Brahmā, Shakra, and the gods of the sun and moon. Through this merit I will surely lead to enlightenment my parents and my teacher, the late Dōzen-bō.

But there are certain doubts that trouble me. The Venerable Maudgalyāyana attempted to save his mother, Shōdai-nyo, but he could not do so, and she remained in the realm of hungry spirits. The monk Sunakshatra was a son of the World-Honored One of Great Enlightenment, and yet he fell into the Avīchi hell. Thus, although one may exert one’s full effort to save others, it is very difficult to save them from the karmic retribution that they have brought upon themselves.

The late Dōzen-bō treated me as one of his favorite disciples, so I cannot believe that he bore any hatred toward me. But he was a timid man, and he could never bring himself to give up his position at the temple where he lived, Seichō-ji. Moreover, he was fearful of what Kagenobu, the steward of the region, might do if he gave ear to my teachings. And at Seichō-ji he had to live in the midst of priests like Enchi and Jitsujō, who were as evil as Devadatta or Kokālika, and to put up with their intimidations, so that he became more fearful than ever. As a result, he turned a deaf ear to the longtime disciples he was fondest of. I wonder what will become of such a man in the next life.

There is one thing to be thankful for. Kagenobu, Enchi, and Jitsujō all died before Dōzen-bō did, and that was something of a help. These men all met an untimely death because of the chastisement of the ten demon daughters who protect the Lotus Sutra. After they died, Dōzen-bō began to have some faith in the Lotus Sutra. But it was rather like obtaining a stick after the fight is over, or lighting a lantern at midday—the proper time had already passed.

In addition, whatever happens, one ought to feel pity and concern for one’s own children or disciples. Dōzen-bō was not an entirely helpless man, and yet, though I was exiled all the way to the province of Sado, he never once tried to visit me. This is hardly the behavior of one who believes in the Lotus Sutra.

In spite of all that, I thought a great deal of him, and when I heard the news of his death, I felt as though, whether I had to walk through fire or wade through water, I must rush to his grave, pound on it, and recite a volume of the Lotus Sutra for his sake.

However, it often happens with worthies that, although they do not think of themselves as having retired from the world, other people assume that they have, and therefore, if they were to come rushing out of retreat for no good reason, people would suppose that they had failed to accomplish their purpose. For this reason, no matter how much I might wish to visit his grave, I feel that I cannot do so.

Now you two, Jōken-bō and Gijō-bō, were my teachers in my youth. You are like the administrators of priests Gonzō and Gyōhyō, who though they were at one time the teachers of the Great Teacher Dengyō, later instead became his disciples. When Kagenobu was bent on harming me and I decided that I must leave Mount Kiyosumi [on which Seichō-ji is located], you helped me escape in secret. You have performed an unrivaled service for the Lotus Sutra. There can be no doubt about the reward that awaits you in your next rebirth.

 

Lecture

 

 

Chapter32(Revealing the Daimoku as the Vital Essence)

Main Text

Question: Within the eight volumes and twenty-eight chapters that constitute the entirety of the Lotus Sutra, what part represents the true heart of the work?

Answer: The heart of the Flower Garland Sutra is the title Great and Vast Buddha Flower Garland Sutra. The heart of the Āgama Sutra is the title Medium-Length Āgama Sutra, as Spoken by the Buddha. The heart of the Great Collection Sutra is the title Great Correct and Equal Great Collection Sutra. The heart of the Wisdom Sutra is the title Great Perfection of Wisdom Sutra. The heart of the Two-Volumed Sutra is the title Buddha Infinite Life Sutra, as Spoken by the Buddha. The heart of the Meditation Sutra is the title Meditation on the Buddha Infinite Life Sutra, as Spoken by the Buddha. The heart of the Amida Sutra is the title Amida Sutra, as Spoken by the Buddha. The heart of the Nirvana Sutra is the title Mahāparinirvāna Sutra. It is the same with all the sutras. The daimoku, or title, of the sutra, which appears before the opening words “This is what I heard,” is in all cases the true heart of the sutra. This is true whether it is a Mahayana sutra or a Hinayana sutra. As for the Mahāvairochana Sutra, the Diamond Crown Sutra, the Susiddhikara Sutra, and so forth—in all cases the title constitutes the heart.

The same is true of the Buddhas. The Thus Come One Mahāvairochana, Sun Moon Bright Buddha, Burning Torch Buddha, Great Universal Wisdom Excellence Buddha, Cloud Thunder Sound King Buddha—in the case of all these Buddhas, the name itself contains within it all the various virtues that pertain to that particular Buddha.

The same, then, applies to the Lotus Sutra. The five characters Myoho-renge-kyo that appear before the opening words “This is what I heard” comprise the true heart of the eight volumes of the work. Moreover, they are the heart of all the sutras, as well as the correct teaching that stands above all the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, the people of the two vehicles, and all the heavenly and human beings, asuras, and dragon deities.

Question: If one person should chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo without understanding its meaning, and another person should chant the words Namu-daihōkō-butsu-kegonkyō (Devotion to the Great and Vast Buddha Flower Garland Sutra) without understanding their meaning, would the merit acquired by the two persons be equal, or would one acquire greater merit than the other?

Answer: One would acquire greater merit than the other.

Question: Why do you say so?

Answer: A small river can accommodate the water flowing into it from dew, brooks, wells, ditches, and little streams, but it cannot accommodate the water from a big river. A big river can accommodate the water from a small river with its dew, brooks, and so forth, but it cannot accommodate the water from the great ocean. Now the Āgama sutras are like the small river with its wells, streams, brooks, and dew, while the sutras of the Correct and Equal period, the Amida Sutra, the Mahāvairochana Sutra, and the Flower Garland Sutra are like the big river that accommodates the small river. But the Lotus Sutra is like the great ocean that can hold all the water from dew, brooks, wells, streams, small rivers, big rivers, and the rains from heaven, without losing a single drop.

Suppose that a person is burning with fever. If he sits down beside a large body of cold water and stays there for a while, his fever will abate, but if he lies down beside a little body of water, he will continue to suffer as before. In the same way, if an icchantika, or person of incorrigible disbelief, who has committed the five cardinal sins and has slandered the Law, should try to cool himself beside the little bodies of water that are the Āgama, Flower Garland, Meditation, and Mahāvairochana sutras, the raging fever caused by his great offenses would never be dispelled. But if he should lie down on the great snowy mountain that is the Lotus Sutra, then the raging fever caused by the five cardinal sins, his slander of the Law, and his incorrigible disbelief would be dispelled instantly.

Therefore, ignorant people should by all means have faith in the Lotus Sutra. For although one may think that all the titles of the sutras are the same in effect and that it is as easy to chant one as another, in fact the merit acquired even by an ignorant person who chants the title of the Lotus Sutra is as far superior to that acquired by a wise person who chants some other title as heaven is to earth!

To illustrate, even a person with great strength cannot break a strong rope with his bare hands. But if one has a little knife, then even a person of meager strength can sever the rope with ease. Even a person with great strength cannot cut through a piece of hard stone with a dull sword. But if one has a sharp sword, then even a person of meager strength can cut the stone in two.

Or, to give another example, even though one may not know what is in the medicine, if one takes a dose of it, one’s illness can be cured. But if one takes only ordinary food, one’s illness will never be cured. Or, to give yet another example, an elixir can actually increase one’s life span, whereas ordinary medicine, though it can cure illness, can never prolong one’s life.

 

Lecture

In this chapter, it is revealed that the essence of the Lotus Sutra lies in its title (Daimoku). While the previous chapter concluded the discussion on repaying the debt of gratitude to the teacher Dozen-bo, one might ask why the essence of the eight volumes of the Lotus Sutra is discussed here. This is because the previous chapter’s conclusion stated that Dozen-bo, being a person of weak faith in the Lotus Sutra—whose belief was as fleeting as a lamp in the daylight and who failed to visit the Daishonin during his exile to Sado—could not escape the strict law of causality (jigo-jitokku or “reaping what one sows”).

However, from this chapter onward, Nichiren Daishonin begins to propagate the Three Great Secret Laws—the very heart and marrow of the Buddha’s lifetime teachings. This leads to the ultimate conclusion: “This merit must surely gather in the spirit of the late Dozen-bo.” In other words, the subsequent dialogue and reasoning are established to reveal the Three Great Secret Laws, making the entire flow of the text a single, unified message.

 

The Five Characters of Myoho as the Heart of the Eight Volumes

 

The “Myoho” (Mysterious Law) that precedes the phrase “Thus I have heard” (Nyoze Gamon) possesses two meanings: first, Ju-ho (focusing on the Law itself), and second, Ku-ki (merit returning to its source). Within the first meaning, Ju-ho, there are two additional aspects: Myo-tsu (general name) and Gi-betsu (specific meaning).

The Great Teacher Miao-lo stated, “By briefly citing the title, the profound meaning (Genshi) encompasses the entire sutra.” Here, “briefly citing the title” corresponds to the general name, while “encompassing the entire sutra” refers to the specific meaning. Similarly, The Annotations on ‘The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra’ (Gukki) states: “The two characters of Myoho generally clarify both the theoretical and essential teachings.” In this context, the two characters Myoho are the general name, and clarifying both teachings is the specific meaning.

The second meaning, Ku-ki (merit returning to its source), also includes two aspects: the True Effect (Hon-ka) and the True Cause (Hon-in). The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra (Hokke Genda) states: “This Myoho-renge-kyo is the profound, secret treasury of the original state (Honchi), attained by all Buddhas of the three existences.” The Annotations further clarify: “Though it is taught in the theoretical teaching (Shakumon), when we trace its merit, its source lies in the essential teaching; therefore, it is called the original state.”

Regarding the True Effect, it refers to the Myoho attained as the result of enlightenment, which is the “profound original state” in its external, literal sense found in the text of the “Life Span” (Juryo) chapter. Conversely, the True Cause refers to the Myoho attained through the “Original Name” (Hon-in Myojo), which is the internal, innermost meaning found in the depths of the “Life Span” chapter.

This True Cause, or the Law of the “Original Name,” is the Myoho-renge-kyo that embodies the Three Great Secret Laws. In the text, “Original State” (Honchi) refers to the Sanctuary of the Essential Teaching (Honmon no Kaidan); it is the “original state” because it is the place where the Object of Devotion (Honzon) resides. “Profound” (Jinshin) refers to the Object of Devotion of the Essential Teaching (Honmon no Honzon). The “ultimate profound reality” is the Honzon of Ichinen Sanzen (three thousand realms in a single moment of life). “Secret Treasury” (Okuzo) is the object of praise, which refers to the Invocation (Daimoku) of the Essential Teaching. Within the Daimoku, all myriad practices and virtues are encompassed.

Because it pertains to the Myoho that encompasses all Three Great Secret Laws, it is called the “profound, secret treasury of the original state.” If we trace the merit of today’s eight volumes and twenty-eight chapters of the Lotus Sutra, it ultimately returns to the True Effect in the near term and to the True Cause in the long term. Therefore, we regard the True Cause—the Law of the “Original Name”—as the “source of sources” and the “mysticism of mysticisms.”

 

The Difference in Merit Between the Wise and the Foolish

 

The merit of a foolish person who chants the Daimoku of the Lotus Sutra is immensely superior, while the merit of a wise person who chants the titles of provisional sutras is vastly inferior. Thus, the difference between the merit of the wise and the foolish is as vast as heaven and earth.

All other metaphors in the text carry this same meaning. Even if one is foolish or has committed evil, the merit gained from believing in the Gohonzon and chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo even once is absolute. This beautifully illustrates the enlightenment of evil persons and the salvation of all people across every strata of society.

Modern leaders often call for the salvation of the people out of mere vanity. They do not truly consider the happiness of the impoverished, the sick, or the suffering from the depths of their hearts. In this modern age, we should reflect deeply on the fact that the Soka Gakkai alone has risen as the true ally of the unfortunate.

The text asks: “If one person should chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo without understanding its meaning, and another person should chant the words Namu-daihōkō-butsu-kegonkyō (Devotion to the Great and Vast Buddha Flower Garland Sutra) without understanding their meaning, would the merit acquired by the two persons be equal, or would one acquire greater merit than the other?” The answer is: “One would acquire greater merit than the other.”

These are truly vital words. Religion is determined by the object of one’s faith—the Honzon. Faith is the belief in the benefit (kudoku) that arises from the fusion between the person and the Honzon. Therefore, “how” one believes is a separate issue. We must carefully ponder the statement: “Even if one’s resolve is not sincere, if one connects with the Correct Environment (Seikyo or the True Object of Devotion), the merit is still immense. If the Environment is not correct, then even if one is without falsehood, it will not become the seed of enlightenment.”

The current perspective of the intellectual class is completely inverted. They do not give a single thought to the correctness of a religion or its object of devotion, acting as if the only thing that matters is the practitioner’s mental state. Some even go so far as to suggest that morning and evening Gongyo is good for health simply because it stimulates the diaphragm. Such statements, which ignore the very essence of religion, are truly outrageous.

 

 

Chapter33(Broadly Revealing the Daimoku as the Essence)

Main Text

Question: Of the twenty-eight chapters of the Lotus Sutra, which is the heart, which is the most essential?

Answer: Some would say that each chapter is essential to the matter that it deals with. Some would contend that the “Expedient Means” and “Life Span” chapters are the heart, others that the “Expedient Means” alone is the heart, or that the “Life Span” alone is the heart. Some would say that the heart is the passage telling how the Buddhas open the door of Buddha wisdom to all living beings, show it, cause them to awaken to it, and induce them to enter its path,¹¹⁵ others that the passage on the “true aspect of all phenomena”¹¹⁶ is the heart.

Question: What is your opinion?

Answer: I believe that the words Nam-myoho-renge-kyo constitute the heart.

Question: What is your proof?

Answer: The fact that Ānanda, Manjushrī, and the others wrote, “This is what I heard.”

Question: What do you mean by that?

Answer: Over a period of eight years, Ānanda, Manjushrī and the others listened to the immeasurable meanings of the Lotus Sutra, never missing a single phrase, a single verse, a single word. Yet, after the Buddha had passed away, at the time of the compilation of his teachings, when the 999 arhats took up their writing brushes and dipped them in ink, they first of all wrote “Myoho-renge-kyo,” and after that they intoned the words, “This is what I heard.” Therefore, the five characters of Myoho-renge-kyo must be the heart of the eight volumes and twenty-eight chapters that compose the work, must they not?

Therefore, the Dharma Teacher Fa-yün of Kuang-che-ssu temple, who is said to have lectured on the Lotus Sutra ever since the distant age of Sun Moon Bright Buddha, states, “The words ‘This is what I heard’ indicate that one is going to transmit the doctrines one has heard preached. The title, which precedes these words, sums up the sutra as a whole.”¹¹⁷

The Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai, who was present on Eagle Peak when the Lotus Sutra was preached and heard it in person, writes, “The word ‘this’ [of ‘This is what I heard’] indicates the essence of a doctrine heard from the Buddha.”¹¹⁸ And the Great Teacher Chang-an writes, “The transcriber [Chang-an] comments on T’ien-t’ai’s explanation of the title of the Lotus Sutra, saying, ‘Hence [his explanation of the title in] the preface conveys the profound meaning of the sutra. The profound meaning indicates the heart of the text.’”¹¹⁹

In this passage, “the heart of the text” signifies that the daimoku, or title, of the text is the heart of the Lotus Sutra. As the Great Teacher Miao-lo states, “It is the heart of the Lotus Sutra that encompasses all the doctrines preached by the Buddha in the course of his lifetime.”¹²⁰

India comprises seventy states, but they are known collectively by the name India. Japan comprises sixty provinces,¹²¹ but they are known collectively by the name Japan. Within the name India are contained all the seventy states, as well as all their people, animals, treasures, and so forth. Within the name Japan are contained all the sixty-six provinces. The feathers sent as tribute from Dewa, the gold of the province of Mutsu,¹²² and all the other treasures of the nation, as well as the people and animals, and temples and shrines, are contained within the two characters that form the name Japan.

One who possesses the heavenly eye can look at the two characters of the name Japan and see all the sixty-six provinces along with their people and animals. One who possesses the Dharma eye can see all the people and animals now dying in one place, now being born in another place.

It is like hearing someone’s voice and knowing what the person must look like, or seeing someone’s footprints and judging whether the person is large or small. Or it is like estimating the size of a pond by looking at the lotuses that grow in it, or imagining the size of the dragons by observing the rain that they cause to fall. Each of these examples illustrates the principle that all things are expressed in one.

It might appear from this that the daimoku, or title, of any Āgama sutra must contain all the teachings of the Buddhas, but in fact it contains only one Buddha, the Shakyamuni of the Hinayana teachings. It might also appear that the titles of the Flower Garland, Meditation, and Mahāvairochana sutras must contain all the teachings of the Buddhas, but in fact they do not include the doctrine concerning the attainment of Buddhahood by persons of the two vehicles, or the Shakyamuni Buddha who gained enlightenment in the far distant past. They are like flowers that bloom but are followed by no fruit, thunder that rolls but brings no rain, a drum that has no sound, eyes that cannot see, a woman who bears no child, or a person who has no life or spirit.

The mantras associated with the Buddhas Mahāvairochana, Medicine Master, and Amida and Bodhisattva Perceiver of the World’s Sounds are of the same nature. Though in the various sutras containing these mantras they are said to be like a great king, Mount Sumeru, the sun and moon, good medicine, a wish-granting jewel, or a sharp sword, they are as far beneath the daimoku of the Lotus Sutra as mud is beneath the clouds.

Not only are they vastly inferior, but all of them have lost their respective inherent functions. When the sun comes up, the light of the crowds of stars is completely eclipsed; when bits of iron are placed near a magnet, they lose their property. When a great sword is exposed to even a small fire, it ceases to be of any use; when cow’s milk or donkey’s milk comes into the presence of lion king’s milk, it turns to water. A pack of foxes will forget all their tricks if they meet up with a dog; a band of dogs will all quake with fright if they encounter a small tiger.

In the same way, if one chants Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, then the power of the words Namu-Amida-butsu, the power of the mantras invoking Mahāvairochana, the power of Bodhisattva Perceiver of the World’s Sounds, and the power of all the Buddhas, all the sutras, and all the bodhisattvas will without exception vanish before the power of Myoho-renge-kyo.

Unless these other sutras manage to borrow the power of Myoho-renge-kyo, they will all become worthless things. This is a fact that stands before our very eyes in the present age.

Because I, Nichiren, chant and spread Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, the power of Namu-Amida-butsu will be like a moon waning, a tide running out, grass withering in autumn and winter, or ice melting in the sun. Watch and see!

 

Notes

115. Lotus Sutra, chap. 2.

116. A reference to the “true aspect of all phenomena,” as revealed in chapter 2 of the Lotus Sutra.

117. This passage is quoted in Chishō’s Collection of Orally Transmitted Teachings as Fa-yün’s words.

118. The Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra.

119. Profound Meaning.

120. On “The Profound Meaning.”

121. The text reads sixty, although Japan actually had sixty-six provinces, as indicated in the sentence after next.

122. The province of Dewa in northern Japan is said to have been famous for hawk and eagle feathers. Gold was first discovered in Japan in the northern province of Mutsu in the twenty-first year of the Tempyō era (750).

 

Lecture

 

 

Chapter34(The Propagation of Mahayana by Ashvaghosha, Nāgārjuna, and Others)

Main Text

Question: If this Law that you have been describing is in fact so wonderful, why is it not better known? Why have not Mahākāshyapa, Ānanda, Ashvaghosha, Nāgārjuna, Asanga, Vasubandhu, Nan-yüeh, T’ien-t’ai, Miao-lo, and Dengyō spread it abroad the way Shan-tao spread the practice of reciting Namu-Amida-butsu throughout China or the way Eshin, Yōkan,¹²³ and Hōnen spread it in Japan, turning the whole country into worshipers of Amida Buddha?

Answer: This is an old criticism, not by any means one that is raised here for the first time.

Bodhisattvas Ashvaghosha and Nāgārjuna were great scholars who lived, respectively, six hundred and seven hundred years after the passing of Shakyamuni Buddha. When these men appeared in the world and began spreading the doctrines of the Mahayana sutras, the various followers of the Hinayana raised objections.

“Mahākāshyapa and Ānanda,” they said, “lived on for twenty or forty years after the passing of the Buddha, preaching the correct teaching. Presumably they conveyed the heart of all the teachings that the Buddha had propounded during his lifetime. Now we find that what these two men emphasized were simply the concepts of suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self. Ashvaghosha and Nāgārjuna may be very wise, but are we to suppose that they are superior to Mahākāshyapa and Ānanda? This is our first objection.

“Mahākāshyapa obtained his enlightenment through direct encounters with the Buddha. But these two men, Ashvaghosha and Nāgārjuna, have never encountered the Buddha. This is our second objection.

“The non-Buddhist philosophers who preceded the Buddha taught that life is permanent, joyful, endowed with self, and pure. Later, when the Buddha appeared in the world, he declared that life is marked by suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self. Now Ashvaghosha and Nāgārjuna insist that it is permanent, joyful, endowed with self, and pure. This being so, we must suppose that, since both the Buddha and Mahākāshyapa have passed away from the world, the devil king of the sixth heaven has taken possession of these two men and is trying to overthrow the teachings of Buddhism and replace them with the teachings of the non-Buddhists.

“If that is so, then these men are the enemies of Buddhism. We must smash their skulls, cut off their heads, put an end to their lives, see that they get no more to eat. Let us drive them from the country!”

Such were the declarations of the Hinayana believers. And Ashvaghosha and Nāgārjuna, each having only a few allies, were forced day and night to listen to these shouts of calumny, and morning and evening to bear the attacks of sticks and staves.

But these two men were in fact messengers of the Buddha. For in the Māyā Sutra, it is predicted that Ashvaghosha will appear six hundred years, and Nāgārjuna, seven hundred years, after the Buddha’s passing. The same prediction is also recorded in the Lankāvatāra Sutra, and of course in the Buddha’s Successors Sutra as well.

But the Hinayana believers would not heed these predictions, and instead attacked the Mahayanists blindly and without reason. “Since hatred and jealousy . . . abound even when the Thus Come One is in the world, how much more will this be so after his passing?” says the Lotus Sutra. Looking at the time of Ashvaghosha and Nāgārjuna, one begins to have a little understanding of what these words of the sutra really mean. Moreover, Bodhisattva Āryadeva was killed by a non-Buddhist, and the Venerable Āryasimha had his head cut off. These events, too, give one cause for thought.

 

Notes

123. Eshin (942–1017) was a Tendai priest, famed for having compiled The Essentials of Rebirth in the Pure Land. Yōkan (1032–1111) was a precursor of the Nembutsu school, who propagated the Pure Land teaching, centering his activities in the Kyoto area.

 

Lecture

 

 

Chapter35 (The Propagation of the Theoretical Teaching by T’ien-t’ai (Tiantai) and Dengyo)

Main Text

Then, some fifteen hundred or more years after the passing of the Buddha, in the country of China, which lies east of India, the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai appeared in the world during the years of the Ch’en and Sui dynasties. He declared that among the sacred teachings put forth by the Thus Come One were the Mahayana and the Hinayana, the exoteric and the esoteric, the provisional and the true. Mahākāshyapa and Ānanda had concentrated on spreading the Hinayana teachings, he explained. Ashvaghosha, Nāgārjuna, Asanga, and Vasubandhu had spread the provisional Mahayana teachings. But with regard to the true Mahayana teaching of the Lotus Sutra, they had merely touched on it briefly but concealed its meaning, or had described the surface meaning of the sutra but failed to discuss the whole range of the Buddha’s teachings expounded throughout his lifetime. Or they had described the theoretical teaching but not the essential teaching, or they had understood the theoretical and essential teachings but not the teaching for observing the mind.

When the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai expounded these views, the millions of followers of the ten schools of Buddhism, three in southern China and seven in northern China, all with one accord gave a great laugh of derision.

“Here in these latter days, a truly amazing priest has made his appearance among us!” they exclaimed. “Though there have at times been persons who adhered to biased views and opposed us, never has there been anyone who maintained that all the 260 or more Tripitaka masters and teachers of Buddhism, who have lived since the introduction of Buddhism in the tenth year of the Yung-p’ing era (c.e. 67) of the Later Han, the year with the cyclical sign hinoto-u, down to these present years of the Ch’en and Sui, were ignorant. And on top of that, he says that they are slanderers of the Law who are destined to fall into the evil paths. Such is the kind of person that has appeared!

“He is so insane that he even maintains that the Tripitaka Master Kumārajīva, the man who introduced the Lotus Sutra to China, was an ignorant fool. Whatever he may say about the men of China, imagine his saying that the great scholars of India such as Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu and the several hundred others, all of them bodhisattvas of the four ranks, did not teach the true doctrine. Anyone who killed this man would be doing no more than killing a hawk. In fact, he would be more praiseworthy than someone who kills a demon!”

This was the way they railed at the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai. And later, in the time of the Great Teacher Miao-lo, when the Dharma Characteristics and True Word doctrines were introduced from India, and the Flower Garland school was first established in China, Miao-lo spoke out against these teachings and was met with a similar uproar.

In Japan, the Great Teacher Dengyō made his appearance eighteen hundred years after the Buddha had passed away. After examining the commentaries of T’ien-t’ai, he began to criticize the six schools that had flourished in Japan in the 260 or more years since the time of Emperor Kimmei. People in turn slandered him, saying that the Brahmanists who lived in the time of the Buddha or the Taoists of China must have been reborn in Japan.

Dengyō also proposed to set up an ordination platform for administering the great precepts of perfect and immediate enlightenment, such as had never existed in India, China, or Japan in the eighteen hundred years since the Buddha’s passing. Indeed he went farther than this, declaring that the ordination platform at Kannon-ji temple in the western region [of Tsukushi], the ordination platform at Ono-dera temple in the eastern province of Shimotsuke, and the ordination platform at Tōdai-ji temple in the central province of Yamato¹²⁴ all stank with the foul odor of the Hinayana precepts and were as worthless as broken tile and rubble. And the priests who upheld such precepts, he said, were no better than foxes and monkeys.

In reply, his critics exclaimed: “Ah, how amazing! This thing that looks like a priest must in fact be a great swarm of locusts that has appeared in Japan and is about to gobble up the tender shoots of Buddhism in one swoop. Or perhaps Chou of the Yin dynasty or Chieh of the Hsia has been reborn in Japan in the shape of this priest. Perchance Emperor Wu of the Northern Chou and Emperor Wu-tsung¹²⁵ of the T’ang have reappeared in the world. At any moment now, Buddhism may be wiped out and the nation overthrown.”

As for the ordinary people, they clapped their hands in alarm and waggled their tongues, saying, “Whenever the priests of these two types of Buddhism, Mahayana and Hinayana, appear together, they fight like the lord Shakra and the asuras, or like Hsiang Yü and Kao-tsu¹²⁶ disputing possession of the kingdom.”

Dengyō’s opponents continued to revile him, saying: “In the time of the Buddha, there were two ordination platforms,¹²⁷ one belonging to the Buddha and the other to Devadatta, and a number of people were killed in the dispute over them. This man may well defy the other schools, but he declares that he must set up an ordination platform for administering the precepts of perfect and immediate enlightenment such as even his master, the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai, was unable to establish. How strange! And how frightening, how frightening!”

But Dengyō had his passages of scripture to support him, and as you know, the Mahayana ordination platform was eventually set up and has been in existence for some time now on Mount Hiei.

Thus, although their enlightenment may have been the same, from the point of view of the teaching that they propagated, Ashvaghosha and Nāgārjuna were superior to Mahākāshyapa and Ānanda, T’ien-t’ai was superior to Ashvaghosha and Nāgārjuna, and Dengyō surpassed T’ien-t’ai. In these latter times, people’s wisdom becomes shallow, while the Buddhist teaching becomes more profound. To give an analogy, a mild illness can be cured with ordinary medicine, but a severe illness requires an elixir. A man who is weak must have strong allies to help him.

 

Notes

123. Eshin (942–1017) was a Tendai priest, famed for having compiled The Essentials of Rebirth in the Pure Land. Yōkan (1032–1111) was a precursor of the Nembutsu school, who propagated the Pure Land teaching, centering his activities in the Kyoto area.

124. Kannon-ji, Ono-dera (also called Yakushi-ji), and Tōdai-ji temples were the sites of the three Hinayana ordination platforms officially established by Ganjin in 754, 761, and 762.

125. Emperor Wu (543–578) and Emperor Wu-tsung (814–846) both were responsible for persecutions of Buddhism in 574 and 845. Wu valued Confucianism and strove to abolish the Buddhist teachings. Wu-tsung came to revere Taoism after he ascended the throne, and he imposed oppressive measures on the Buddhist community.

126. Hsiang Yü (232–202 b.c.e.) and Kao-tsu (247–195 b.c.e.) were warlords who contended for power in the confusion following the death of the First Emperor of the Ch’in dynasty. After a lengthy struggle Kao-tsu (Liu Pang) emerged the victor and founded the Han dynasty in 202 b.c.e.

127. Some ten years after attaining enlightenment, Shakyamuni Buddha established an ordination platform at Jetavana Monastery in Shrāvastī. To defy him, Devadatta established a rival platform on Mount Gayāshīrsha.

 

Lecture