On the Eight Cold Hells Chapter 2
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Among the six paths, the path or realm of heavenly beings is the only one in which beings are born with clothes on. But even in the path of human beings, Shānavāsa and the nun Bright White1 were born from the womb of their mothers wearing clothes. This was because they had [in previous existences] not only donated clothing to persons of worth, but had also made offerings of warm, pure garments to their parents, their lords, and to the three treasures of Buddhism.
The man named Shānavāsa donated a robe to a pratyekabuddha who was naked, and thereafter, for age after age and lifetime after lifetime, he always had clothes on his body. The woman known as Gautamī2 presented Shakyamuni Buddha with a woolen robe, and he predicted that she would become a Buddha named Gladly Seen by All Living Beings.
And now here is a woman who donates a robe to the Lotus Sutra. In future lives she will not only escape the sufferings of the eight cold hells, but in her present life she will be spared major calamities. Her benefits will be such that they extend to her sons and daughters, so that they are dressed in robe upon robe, of color upon color!
Respectfully,
Nichiren
The eighteenth day of the eleventh month in the third year of Kenji [1277], cyclical sign hinoto-ushi
Reply to the wife of the lay priest Ōta
Background
Nichiren Daishonin sent this letter from Minobu in the winter of 1277 to the wife of Ōta Jōmyō of Shimōsa Province. In expressing his appreciation for her donation of a winter robe, the Daishonin explains the benefit of making such an offering. Briefly describing the eight hot hells and the eight cold hells mentioned in Buddhist scriptures, he identifies the people who will fall into the cold hells as those who steal the clothes of others, or who watch while others suffer in cold but do nothing to help them. He contrasts this with the benefits accruing from offering a robe to the Lotus Sutra. Such benefits will protect the giver from calamity in this life and from the cold hells in the next life and will extend to her children as well.
Notes
1. Shānavāsa is regarded as the third of Shakyamuni Buddha’s twenty-three, or the fourth of his twenty-four, successors. He was a wealthy man of Rājagriha, the capital of Magadha in India. Bright White is said to have been a daughter of a wealthy man in the state of Kapilavastu in northern India. In Cloth for a Robe and an Unlined Robe, the Daishonin says, “A woman called the nun Bright White was born dressed in a robe. And as she grew, this robe bit by bit became bigger. Later, when she was ordained as a nun, it served as a nun’s robe. And finally, at the assembly where the Lotus Sutra was being preached, a prediction was bestowed on Bright White that, in a future existence, she would become a Buddha. Her name would be the Thus Come One Gladly Seen by All Living Beings” (p. 602).
2. Also known as Mahāprajāpatī, the aunt and foster mother of Shakyamuni.